Death's Dancer

by Jasmine Silvera

  The pain was exquisite. When his hands went around her neck, she surged, locking her elbow and aiming the heel of her left hand at his throat. He slumped with a choking gurgle, and she rolled him off, coughing as she dragged herself across the floor.

  The second assailant slammed into her back while she was down. A thick cloth wrapped around her throat. She thrashed, struggling for air. If she was lucky, she had ten or fifteen seconds before she lost consciousness.

  I’m not going to be strangled to death with my own kitchen towel.

  Indignance fueled her struggles, but she failed repeatedly to break the hold. There was nothing left but surrender. She thought of her family, at home and at the Academy.

  Niles would never forgive himself for allowing the breech. Her mother would never forgive the necromancer for involving her in this. The last thought before the blackness stole her vision was of Azrael; the silver shine in his eyes.

  So much for no regrets. I’m so sorry.

  Azrael blew the apartment door open. A single burst of power knocked the black-clad figure off Isela’s back. Gregor dropped through the window. As her assailant catapulted through the air between them, Gregor sliced the head from the body. He landed in a crouch before rising to meet any other threats as the head rolled across the floor. He sheathed his sword and slid a 9mm from beneath his coat, stalking around the apartment. But the space was still. The second assassin was on the floor, his windpipe shattered.

  Azrael rolled Isela onto her back, untangling the cloth from her neck. The air wheezed softly in her throat.

  Gregor returned with the silk robe hooked over his index finger. Azrael took it without looking, sliding the material around her body. He drew one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders, and lifted her off the floor.

  Footsteps thumped on the stairs to the apartment, and Gregor stalked across the room. Niles appeared in the doorway. Behind him was the Asian woman with a short, bladed staff in her hands.

  When she saw Isela, a cry escaped her. “Is she—?”

  Pushing up the stairs behind them was a tall blond man, a baseball bat on his shoulder.

  Gregor slid between Azrael and the director’s bodyguard, taking aim. All three took a step backward.

  Put it away, Azrael commanded. These are her cohorts.

  Gregor complied. Azrael hadn’t mastered his rage. Only the knowledge that this was Isela’s sanctuary kept him from tearing the room down around them. He turned cold eyes on the assembled mortals.

  It was a look that had brought others to their knees, but this lot didn’t back down from him. Their eyes were for her.

  For Isela, Azrael made himself speak. She was so quiet in his arms. He remembered the taste of her fear in his throat.

  “She’ll live.” His eyes found the Asian woman. “You should be proud. She fought well.”

  Tears sprang to the woman’s eyes, but her nod was fierce. The taller blond man rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezing.

  Niles swept the room with his eyes. He noted the two dead figures in black and sheathed his weapon. “Lord Azrael, we had no alarm of a breech—”

  “They were professionals.” Gregor pulled the mask off the head, fastidiously avoiding blood. It was a woman. The man with the baseball bat turned a brackish shade of pale.

  “Recognize her?” Azrael said.

  They all shook their heads. Niles pulled the mask off the other. “I’ve never seen either one.”

  “I’d like a full security review,” Azrael said. “I want to know how they got in undetected.”

  “You’ll have it,” Niles said angrily. “This should not have happened.”

  Azrael nodded. “Gregor, retrieve the bodies for interrogation.”

  Every mortal face in the room drained of blood, but they cleared a path for him as he walked down the stairs with Isela in his arms. Only the man, the bat now hanging at his side, moved to cross his path. Azrael controlled the urge to bare his teeth. The man was familiar with Isela. Loved her even. It was in his eyes.

  “Issy—sir,” he began over an audible lump of emotion. “What will you—”

  “She’s not safe here,” Azrael said, a simple statement of fact. “I can protect her.”

  The man nodded. “If I pack some of her things—”

  “I’ll be sure she gets them,” he replied, pushing past him.

  No one else dared to stop him on the way out of the building.

  Isela’s breath, coming in a gasping wheeze, was tenuous. Every few steps, he felt for her consciousness, but she stayed slack against him. Rory pulled up in the Land Rover as he cleared the front doors. Dory had the door before he’d reached the bottom step. It wasn’t until Azrael slid into the backseat, never setting her down that her eyes opened and found his.

  “If I’m a zombie—” she croaked as the door closed behind them.

  “I know,” he snarled, unable to smile. “You’ll kill me.”

  A crooked smile rippled her cheek. One side of her face was going to bruise soon, but that little smile was full of life. That life made her seem bigger than the small form now curled in his arms.

  “Where are we going?”

  She’d almost been taken from him, so easily. It had been a long time since he’d cared for one of them. And he did, he realized, care for this mortal, who was so fierce and fragile at once. Azrael didn’t realize he was squeezing her to his chest until she wriggled and grimaced. He forced himself to loosen his grip.

  “Back where you belong.”

  Isela made a sound in her throat suspiciously like a laugh, and her eyelashes lowered, gray eyes on him. “And what makes you think I’ll stay there this time?”

  He lowered his lips to the top of her head. “I can be very persuasive.”

  She made a thoughtful, questioning sound. He could feel her breath on his neck and, so lightly he almost missed it, the first touch of her mouth.

  “You underestimate me, Isela. I am not a boy that tires quickly in the pursuit of his interests.”

  Azrael kept his breath slow and regular as she tasted him again. Full lips just as luscious as he’d imagined, pressed against his collarbone through the open neck of his shirt. She snuggled deeper against him. He stiffened immediately, and she let out a raspy laugh that echoed with sex. He wanted to taste her, to feel those lips on his. The rage melted away, replaced with another heat.

  Azrael wondered at her ability to turn his emotion so swiftly, tracing her hairline with one finger to the curve of her cheek. At the corner of her mouth, he stroked absently. She parted her lips, and her whole body trembled against him, inciting the most delicious heat in his groin.

  “I know what I want,” he said. “And I don’t give up until I’ve had my fill.”

  When his parted lips met hers, it was no more than a brush of skin, but it held all the promise of what was to come.

  Isela sighed into his mouth, content, and tucked her head against his collar. She stayed there the entire way back to the castle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Isela listened to the beat of Azrael’s heart, allowing the gentle rocking of the car to lull her into a state just below consciousness. The kiss lingered in her thoughts. She clung to it, keeping the memories at bay.

  Not an hour ago, she was convinced she was going to die. With it came a suffocating sense that there was so much she hadn’t done. It was as choking as the hold on her neck. And the first regret of many was Azrael.

  He wasn’t asking her to love him, to need him. He’d only acknowledged the current between them and been willing to pursue it. In his capacity as a necromancer, she may have been a tool, but Azrael was also a man and answered to the same demands her body placed on her. Judging by the danger they had been in so far, she might not be the only one with her life on the line.

  When they arrived at the castle, she started to sit up, but his arm clamped down, holding her firm. She softened immediately. For a moment he didn’t move. Had she surprised him?

&nbs
p; Quiescent, Isela rested, saving her strength even as she savored his. Azrael climbed out of the car and strode into the castle with her in his arms. The heavy door of the bedroom fell back under his hand easily.

  “Can you stand?” His voice was gruff, as though he was the one who had been recently strangled.

  Isela nodded against his chest. When her legs held, he let go of her hips. Cupping her cheeks, Azrael turned her head left and right, and his thumbs stroked the bruised skin on her neck. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about it, now or ever. She wanted nothing more than to banish those thoughts with the reminder she was still alive.

  “Are you going to keep playing nursemaid?” she taunted. “Or are you going to fuck me?”

  When his eyes met hers, they were full of heat. Azrael smiled, as wicked and dangerous as ever, and Isela wondered briefly if she had overestimated his compassion for her.

  “I didn’t hear you beg.”

  Azrael took advantage of her parted lips, pressing his against the warmth of her mouth. The heat that had been building spilled down her body, pooling between her thighs and racing out her fingers and toes. When she opened her eyes again, she lay on the bed with no indication of how she’d gotten there.

  Azrael stood above her, tugging the shirt over his head, his eyes never leaving hers. Isela scrambled out of the robe, wrenching the loose jersey tank top that served as her nightshirt over her head. His hands closed on her hips, yanking her toward him. When she tried to rise, he placed a palm in the center of her chest to pin her there.

  The heat of his mouth left her raw and exposed as he worked his way down her neck to her collarbone. Stars raced behind her closed eyelids, exploding green and showering her in sparks. His mouth closed over her left nipple, swallowing the sensitive nerves in dark, wet heat.

  From a life built on physical activity, she knew her body well; having an awareness of it was part of her job. Now that awareness had turned to intense pleasure, short-circuiting her ability to think, rationalize. And they hadn’t even gotten to the main course. A note of panic tightened her back. This was more—much more—than she’d anticipated.

  Sex with this man just might kill her.

  “Surrender.”

  Isela whimpered as his free hand ran lazy circles around her navel, before drifting lower. “Let that busy brain rest, dancer.”

  Azrael joined their mouths again as he stroked her. Fingers met swollen flesh, slicked wet in anticipation. He groaned. When his fingers slid home, he swallowed her shout.

  Her toes spasmed as his fingers curled against her inner walls. She clenched him hard, and her hips angled in invitation.

  Every nerve ending in Isela’s body sang with need, and Azrael keyed them into a harmony that threatened to push her over the edge. He could not be rushed—even the thoroughness with which he took her mouth resonated with control.

  When she opened her eyes again, the smile that licked his lips was pure male desire. He knew what he was doing to her.

  And he was enjoying every moment.

  When his mouth replaced his fingers, Isela screamed—a hoarse, rending sound Azrael answered with a satisfied purr. A fierce liquid heat rushed to the junction of her thighs, threatening to overwhelm her. Her fingers tangled in his hair, but that only served to encourage his attention. His tongue flicked slow, easy strokes, as if he couldn’t care less about the pleasure he inflicted.

  Isela climaxed with a ragged wail, not recognizing the word embedded in it, until she looked down her body. Silver eyes were waiting for hers, alight with victory and a wicked grin of total masculine satisfaction.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, thumbing the last of the tremors from her body. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Isela was beyond caring, beyond pride. Azrael had awakened something primal in her. There was only one thing she needed, and one word between her and it. Her own husky laugh startled her.

  “Please,” she repeated, drawing the word out.

  His grin spread. “My pleasure.”

  He rose between her thighs, filling her in a slow, purposeful thrust. Her slick, swollen body expanded to contain all of him. When he seemed to think he could go no farther, she locked her legs around him and drew him deeper still. Desire pressed frenzy, and tremors shook him with the effort of maintaining control. He rocked his hips unwaveringly until she alternately pounded at his chest and urged him on with feverish insistence. By the time he started to stroke her with his cock, drawing and plunging in the same steady rhythm, her pleas dissolved into wordless cries.

  Isela opened her eyes to find Azrael watching her, molten silver pools fixed on her face as though there were nothing else in the world that mattered.

  That pushed her over the edge. This time he went with her, his body going so hard in hers the intensity of pleasure bordered on pain.

  Snug between his forearms, she hauled in a long breath as he tasted the sweat on her brow. It was some comfort to her that his breath was ragged.

  “Now,” she panted. “I can die.”

  “Not so, dancer.” Azrael’s low, rumbling laughter made her belly quiver.

  He flexed his hips, testing the slickness between them and evoking a groan from her heaving ribcage. This time, when her lips parted in anticipation, he took them greedily with his own, nibbling at her pleasure-swollen mouth until she hooked a hand around the back of his neck, drawing their bodies together fully.

  His irises were thin bands of silver around the velvet darkness of his pupils when he met her eyes. “Did you think I would be satisfied with one taste of you?”

  After showering off soap and satisfaction, Isela retreated to the food tray that had appeared by the fire. Azrael followed lazily, enjoying the return of a deep calm that he hadn’t known was missing.

  The value of physical pleasure had declined as the centuries wore on. In the past, Azrael had considered it an evolution of sorts. There were necromancers who attributed the growth of their talents to their particular sexual prowess and tastes. He’d never given much stock to that theory.

  Instead, he cultivated the stillness, the deep quiet that had captivated Isela. For a time, sick of the world he’d joined when he’d assumed his full powers, he’d fled from it. He spent a century in a monastery until the stillness came to him as easily as the power he wielded. After that, he’d rarely indulged himself in flesh.

  Eschewing a chair, Isela folded herself onto the rug between the table and the fireplace. She started to wrap the towel around herself, but he made a sound of protest. She let it go without a thought. To compensate, he raised the temperature in the room until the rose-brown skin haloing her nipples bloomed soft again. He prowled the room for a moment before drawn to occupy the chair closest to her.

  When Isela didn’t resist, Azrael took over the task of squeezing the moisture from her hair. He rested in the silence between them absent of nervous pattering, more flirting or an anxious search for reassurance of his feelings. Instead, she sighed, leaned back into his knee, and let him stroke her.

  Arousal stirred in him at the thought of having her there; fire and sex slicking their skin with sweat.

  Azrael chided himself. Isela needed to eat and sleep. He required little of either anymore. It was easy to envision spending the rest of the night inside her, listening to the sound of her pleasure until she was spent with release.

  For all her stubborn resistance, Isela was an eager partner, confident enough in her own body to fully express her desire. It was a heady mix; for all her passion and fire, she remained somewhat inaccessible, challenging enough to keep all but the most determined away. Azrael wondered about those who came before him. An unfamiliar possessiveness urged him to mark her as his own.

  The desire startled him. Craving, along with the urge to snap in half any man who touched her, didn’t wane as it had with past partners, now that he’d taken her to his bed.

  It wasn’t just the sex. It was the effect she had on him. While he’d pursued her, she’d dis
turbed his peace. But now? Something about her—the shared pleasure of their bodies and the simple closeness of contact—settled the restless sensation in his chest that had always resisted stillness.

  At last Azrael found himself breaking the silence to tell her about their pursuit of the grimoire. He avoided the worst bits—he healed so quickly there were not even scars to mark the wound or two he’d suffered. It wasn’t until he got to the part about placing a geas for silence on the car, that he stopped to wonder why he was still talking. He wouldn’t have bothered to give his own guard an accounting of his time. Yet here he was, obliquely explaining why he hadn’t kept his word to her. After all, if he had, she might have never had to fight for her life in her own home. The knowledge unsettled him.

  “And I thought you were just mad because I’d turned you down,” she said, casting a mischievous look over her shoulder at him.

  Azrael coughed lightly to cover a laugh. “Turned me down? My Little Bird, you weren’t even playing hard to get.”

  Isela stilled, and the nickname hung between them.

  Somehow it didn’t seem as wrong coming from him as it did two days ago. She realized he was waiting, watching her intently from that stillness, for a reaction. “Did you have a silly nickname as a kid?”

  She’d surprised him with the question. He laughed, and a smile crept up her lips before she could check it.

  “My parents said I never stopped moving,” she went on, unsure why she was telling him this, only that it felt right. “I guess I was always dancing around.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I assumed it was due to your family name, Vogel.”