by Azure Boone
She already possessed the toothbrush and toothpaste the list required, and the plain nail clippers. That was it. She'd have to get a ride to the mall before she could start packing. Too bad Jessie's car was still down. She pulled her phone out to run through her contacts list in search of someone she hadn't already bugged to death for rides. Perfect. Alex from work. She selected the number and waited.
Ten minutes later, she waited for Alex's brother to pick her up in front of Jessie's house. Possibly the last time in her life that she'd be alone with a guy, and it was nerdy Joshua. Figured. Still, it was sweet of him to drop everything to take her to the mall.
She climbed in when he stopped at the curb. "Thanks, Joshua you're a real life saver. I take back every unkind thing I ever thought—" Something about him had changed in the few weeks since she'd last seen him. "Have you been working out or something?"
He laughed an odd barking sound. "Or something." He glanced toward her, then quickly away as he pulled into the street. Either Sally was imagining things, or his normally blue eyes were far darker behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "You're still going to the convent?"
The change of subject derailed her thoughts on how much he'd changed. "I am. I leave day after tomorrow. They sent a list of things I need to bring, and I need to pick them up." No way was she telling him what kind of bra and underwear she'd be wearing under her habit. An odd sense of sleaziness rolled off the normally harmless geek.
Another one of those strange sounding laughs. "I thought you had to be a virgin to become a nun."
She faked a light laugh. "Uh, no, don't remember that in the requirements." Okay, something was definitely not right with him. He was acting…high. The bad kind of high, the kind that ended with forced groping and kicking and screaming maybe. Fiddling with her phone, she quickly set the alarm to go off in two minutes. Time to get out of Joshua's car.
The phone rang and she turned it off, pretending to take a call. "Crap, I'm sorry, Joshua. Can you just let me out here? That was my sister. I forgot I was supposed to take care of some stuff for her. She'll be at the house in a couple minutes and I'll just borrow her car later."
"Uh-huh." The electric locks clicked into place. "Her car that's still broken down? I don't think so."
Sally's heart thudded against her ribs loud enough he had to hear it. "What are you talking about? She just called and said her car was fixed."
"Right." He continued. "That's why you're no—"
Sally screamed and clenched her eyes as a car came out of nowhere and smashed into the driver's door.
The vehicle shuddered and skidded sideways as the airbags exploded. Finally they came to a standstill but the horn continued to blare.
Sally opened her eyes, almost afraid to see. Joshua struggled against the steering wheel pinning him to his seat. His entire body began to change like a slow morphing nightmare. His hands thickened with massive claws replacing his fingernails. His glasses sat askew over eyes gone colorless and his lips drew back to reveal heavy teeth more suited to a jackal.
She drew breath to scream but her door suddenly wrenched open and hands dragged her from the car. Cradled in strong arms, Sally stared up mesmerized into the most perfectly masculine face she'd ever seen with blazing aqua eyes so bright they had to be colored by contacts. Heavy hair black as pitch with blue highlights fell straight to the well-muscled shoulders her hands rested on.
"Hold tight."
His silky-smooth voice touched something deep within her, stirring reaction throughout her body. Heat flowed over her skin while her belly tightened with a sort of anticipation she didn't remember ever feeling. She could only blink in answer as a whirlwind of pale blue particles rose around them, wrapping them tight. Sally had the feeling they were suspended in air then things blurred. The world stopped again and she found herself staring into those piercing blue eyes.
"You're safe," he said.
His soft breath carried the scent of the ocean and warmed her mouth. Sally had never felt anything so enticing. In response to an unexplainable compulsion, she leaned and pressed her lips to his. The stern beautiful mouth, firm under hers, parted with a gasp. Sally didn't mind that it sounded like shock, and pressed another kiss to his full lips, parting hers a little to taste.
His breathing went harsh and he pulled back, eyes wide with surprise.
He felt like her destiny and yet a deep longing for something she knew she could never have gnawed at her.…
She stared at the list thinking she already possessed the toothbrush and toothpaste the list required, and the plain nail clippers. That was it. She'd have to get a ride to the mall before she could start packing. Too bad Jessie's car was still down. She pulled her phone out to run through her contacts list in search of someone she hadn't already bugged to death for rides. Perfect. Alex from work. She selected the number and waited.
It went to voicemail. Looked like she'd have to find someone else.
"That was unacceptable. Your job is to guard my back while I set up the triumvirate." No doubt Dorn sounded as annoyed as he was. The team had allowed the enemy dangerously close to his required bride-to-be. If the demons had been successful, either in harming her or corrupting her, his entire mission would be lost. The chances of finding another female to fulfill her role were extremely low. ."How did they find her so quickly? Are your…" he flicked his fingers toward the other three members of Kassern's little quad … "quarreling?" Keeping the disgust from his face was one miracle he couldn't pull off. The idea that their strengths could be compromised by something as trivial as a spat was rather infuriating.
Dorn's eyes passed over each of them, searching for an answer. When his gaze landed on the female reclining against the preacher on the hotel room bed, she averted her gaze and shot up, heading to the bathroom. "He started it," she mumbled before shutting the door.
Dorn snapped his frown to the young man whose hands went up. "I think she's hormonal." He nearly mouthed the words, darting a look at the bathroom door, clear fear on his face.
Dorn was flabbergasted.
Kassern had been pacing and paused behind Karly's chair to touch her shoulder. "Sally will be going to the Convent soon. She'll be safe on consecrated ground and you'll be able to concentrate on forming the triumvirate."
Dorn couldn't keep from being distracted with Kassern's petting behaviors. He was always touching her like that. He recalled how Sally had felt in his arms for that brief moment as he hurled her back through time to safety. And when she pressed her mouth to his, something other than surprise made his heart nearly leap from his chest. Her lips… he shook the distraction from his head when a description eluded him. Either way, he'd never embarrass them both by constantly putting his hands on her.
He suddenly realized the ridiculously dire situation and faced Kassern. "Using the temporal shift was a potentially powerful tool that could reverse the course of this battle, and I had to use it to toss a girl back fifteen minutes because you're so busy with your human petting zoo instead of doing your simple job of watching the enemy."
Kassern drew Karly to her feet, then sat and pulled her into his lap. "I'm going to let that slide Dorn, since you have no earthly idea of what you're talking about. But do take care with those words of yours, brother. When it comes to my wife, and the rest of my triumvirate, I will make you eat them."
Karly got up. "Come on, let's not fight anymore, please." She went to a machine on the counter and returned with a cup and handed it to Dorn. "Try and chill."
Chill?
"It means calm down." This from Kassern.
Dorn took the cup, careful not to crush it. He looked down at the steaming brown liquid.
"It's coffee," the preacher informed. "You uh, you drink it."
Dorn sipped at the hot liquid. He rolled the dark fluid over his tongue. "Humans drink this? Willingly?"
"They do," the preacher said. "Some even obsessively."
Devyn exited the bath
room and returned to her place in the cradle of the preacher's body. "You're an obsessive coffee drinker." She smiled, her face upturned.
He leaned and kissed her right on the mouth and Dorn couldn't keep the disgust from his face. Did all human couples behave that way? Or was it just Kassern's team that suffered with the detriment?
The woman named Devyn got up and retrieved a red cylinder from a small box-shaped machine designed to keep things cold and pulled a lever on its top. She walked it over to him. "Others drink this. Try it."
Dorn accepted the condensation covered tube and took the obligatory sip. The sickeningly sweet liquid scoured the surface from his tongue and sent droplets flying up his nose. Desperate, he searched for somewhere to spit the offensive bile. Unsuccessful in his search, he swallowed the acid before it could dissolve his tongue. It burned going down, but the great, rumbling blast of air that erupted a moment later was the worst.
Especially when everyone else burst into laughter. Idiots. He took another sip of the preacher's coffee. There was something vaguely suitable to his taste buds in the near-black water. No doubt the bitterness.
"Look, Dorn," Kassern said. "I get the logistics and tactical strategies with you being Commandant of the Brotherhood War Academy. But you have to understand that this isn't like any scenario you've trained for."
The enfeebled ruby archangel's lecture piqued his patience. "No mission is ever an exact re-enactment of a previous one. The Academy may have been my most recent post, but remember, I led an Out Rider Patrol for two millennia." Did he even remember the ultimate War Archangels, charged with patrolling the wastelands at the outer reaches of the Universes? Or had his memory been diseased with his humanity? "If you recall, the area is populated by rogue demons so evil not even other demons will tolerate them, and other beings of varying levels of sentience."
Kassern didn't bother to hide his grin. "See any humans out there in those heavenly wastes? I didn't think so. As evil as Jydheg was, humans are that much unpredictable. Their emotions give them limitless possibility for motivation. That means your game pieces may change nature and course, screwing up your variables and fucking up your formula." Kassern twirled his index finger in the air.
Devyn tossed her empty soda can into the wastebasket with a clatter, interrupting the discussion. "Can we call a truce in the Archangels' Pissing Contest? We need to figure out what's next."
Dorn regarded the preacher's wife, maybe a little surprised with her near impatient eagerness. "We know their short-term goal is to stop us from forming the Triumvirate and Quadumvirate." He slashed through the air with his index finger, leaving a trail of pale blue sparks in the form of written words, to hang suspended as if he wrote on a wall board. "We'll divide the labor along the most logical lines, Kassern and Karly will guard Lucian, Devyn and Troy will guard Jessie, and I will ensure Sally's safety until she arrives at the convent."
Dorn should be relieved instead of preoccupied with rising alarm vague enough to almost convince him it was paranoia. The simple plan seemed just that. Too simple. He ran through numerous scenarios, padding the naked strategy until satisfied.
Draining his fourth cup of the hot beverage called coffee, he excused himself, impatient for action. "I'm going to see what else I can learn about our opposition." They didn't need to know his first stop would be to check on Sally and assure himself of her safety.
****
Lucian flew through his apartment swinging a cologne doused washcloth above his head. Who would've ever dreamed he'd have a woman visit? Surely not him.
Distracting himself with cleaning to avoid the full blown panic attack pressing in, he assured himself it was all normal. He was normal. He could do this. Work at the library had provided the opportunity he'd desperately needed to practice his social skills. He'd finally gotten to the point where he went the entire day without needing to escape to the bathroom for a cold water slap in the face. He considered not cutting himself a heroic achievement. Already the scars on his forearms were fading.
His apartment was tidy enough, but it wasn't exactly clean. He hurried to the bathroom, thinking it unacceptably disgusting for a woman. He grabbed the bottle of bleach and dumped a fourth of it in the toilet, another fourth in the sink and shower drain then hurried and did the same in the kitchen sink.
He paused, feeling nauseous. Okay, bleach and cologne was not a good mix. He hurried and turned on the ceiling fan and opened both doors in the garage apartment, grateful it was small. He'd given Jessie his address instead of letting her follow him, forgetting he hadn't had a chance to prepare for visitors. Female visitors.
It worked out great because she preferred going home to shower first. As did he. He checked his appearance in one of the floor to ceiling mirrors on the fashionably remodeled garage door. He wasn't big on appearances and hoped the plain white T-shirt and black jeans were respectable enough for a woman like her. Shit, he needed to release his anxiety. He checked his watch. Maybe he could slip in a quick vigorous workout.
The need to crawl out of his skin became immediately unbearable and he ripped his T-shirt off and tossed it before hitting the bench like a life preserver.
He worked out at warp speed and in twenty minutes, exhaustion hovered nearby. Damn, he should've removed his jeans. He'd need to change them now. Hell, he'd need another shower!
The weights clanked as he dropped them in their respective holders near the wall.
"Hey," a soft voice said.
Lucian spun around to find Jessie leaning against the wall, looking…flush? Good God help him. He searched for his T-shirt that of course grew legs and walked off.
"Didn't want to disturb you, and the door was open."
Oh hell, it was. He was such a moron. "I—hadn't worked out…" Twice.
"You're fine." Her gaze burned over him before she lowered it to the floor. "Wouldn't want…to drive you to confession."
She was blushing. And nervous. He took in her low riding white jeans hugging her narrow waist, as well as her shapely hips. And a pink peasant type blouse both hid and accentuated her…sisters as she'd called her breasts. No, that wasn't it. Girls. Lucian couldn't believe he'd actually forgotten his nakedness. "Now I need another shower."
"I'm fine, go ahead and do what you need, I don't mind waiting." She sat on the couch. "Ready to take a load off, actually."
He realized what else was different about her. Her lips. Shimmering with a whisper pink. "Okay, great." She glanced up at him and right away he saw her eyes seemed more sensual. Perhaps it was the black outlining them. Not a perceptive line, more of a shadow. She bit her lower lip and smiled a little before looking away. Oh God, he'd been staring. "You just look…so different out of your uniform," he explained, as if she'd asked why he were staring.
"It's nice to get a chance to dress normal, that's for sure."
"I imagine." Her gaze flicked over his nakedness. "Geeze I'm sorry, I'll go shower and change."
"Nothing to be sorry about."
His heart slammed his chest. He was sure her tone meant she liked what she saw. Even though she'd spotted the scars on his arms, she hadn't said a word about them, respecting his privacy. Lucian hurried out without another word before his body could have a chance to show how that affected him.
He showered in five minutes, a little confused with his reaction to her. Girls normally didn't matter to him. His looks attracted all sorts of them and he'd occasionally engaged in obligatory sex to shut Leo up about his lack of sexual ambition.
But ever since he'd met Jessie, there was something so…vulnerably sweet in her. Hidden behind her wit. Maybe even a loneliness that called to his own. Regardless, he needed to slow down before he scared her away. She seemed smart, somebody interesting and safe to get to know better. She wasn't the fast type, thankfully. He wasn't into fast women. Except with her, he could easily do fast. But it'd be nice to have a friend he could…just hang out with, have things in common with. And not be alone.
>
At the same time, her attraction to him was beginning to peek through. She responded to his body in a positive way. Attracted but not blatantly aggressive. It made him feel…relieved. Encouraged in many ways, and yet terrified. God, please help me not make a fool of myself with her.
He got out of the shower and pocketed every scapular her sister had given him, needing all the help he could get. He wore a black T-shirt and comfortable black jeans, faded and worn to a silvery gray. He seemed to get a lot of smiles from women when he wore black. He wanted Jessie's smiles.
Making his way around the imported bamboo partition that served as his bedroom walls, he quietly made his way to where Jessie seemed to have fallen asleep. Unsure of what to do, he sat on the chair next to the sofa and contemplated. While watching her.
She was absolutely stunning in sleep. All soft lines and innocence. Her skin reminded him of the creamy milk he used to get from their goat back in Romania. His gaze lowered to her chest and his body stirred. He looked away, feeling like a peeping tom.
The magnetic pull to her body became irresistible and he snuck his gaze back like a child in a candy store wanting what he couldn't afford to buy. He allowed his eyes to get their fill. He very soon found himself trying to see beyond the clothes. When he'd succeeded, his lips parted to allow him more oxygen. His gaze burned a slow trail to her face and he froze. She was watching him lust after her through half-masted eyes.
It was such a clean bust there was no denying or playing it off. He looked away, ashamed and yet not. She didn't seem offended, in fact, he was pretty sure she appreciated being looked at by him. He was handsome if he were to believe the rumors, so, maybe that's why she didn't mind. It would be the first time he appreciated the aid of his good looks. Of course, with a prick for a boyfriend like hers, it was no wonder she had low self-esteem. It dumbfounded him that a woman as beautiful as her could ever doubt herself. "I didn't want to disturb you. You seemed so peaceful."
He watched her arms raise above her body as she stretched. "Oh my goodness, I'm stiff. Guess I was more tired than I realized."