Her mouth brushed over his like a whisper, and he felt elegant fingers slide along his scalp, fanning his long hair away from his cheek. Time dissolved, and he was back in her drawing room, back to her settee and the very first time they’d kissed. His hair had been shorter then, but he’d dared to wear it a bit longer than current fashion, combing it back from his forehead. As they’d come together, wrapped in each others’ arms, she’d playfully disheveled it as if he were the woman and she the man.
That delirious, head-swimming rush of kissing her was no longer a bittersweet memory, but an overwhelmingly current sensation. And, all at once, he was no longer a Victorian-era gentleman. He morphed into something much more dangerous, becoming simultaneously an ancient warrior and a modern man, possessing both impulses in one body.
“Juliana,” he growled, low in the back of his throat, opening his eyes again so that he could see her clearly. He moved them against the wall of Leo’s study. Pinning her there, framing her between his splayed palms, he stared at her for a long, breathless moment.
“Take me, Ari.” She looked up at him, those pale eyes darker than he’d ever seen them. “I must feel you . . . inside of me. I need to know that I am truly alive. I need your touch, your body to confirm it.”
“We need more privacy,” he groaned, feeling a rush of pleasure race from his pounding chest, right to his hardened cock.
“I locked the door when the others left,” she told him, a daring gleam in her eyes. “I knew what I wanted.”
He swallowed hard, trailing a tentative finger along another tendril of auburn hair that had come loose, feeling it. “Like silk. And the color . . . like jewels. I always thought that.”
She was no illusion; she was his. Real, strong, still pure . . . for now.
His black jeans grew uncomfortably tight as his cock pressed outward against the zipper. Without questioning, he found his fly, popping the button free, and she finished the job, very gently lowering the zipper. As she did so, her knuckles grazed his hard- on, causing him to gasp at the intimate contact. For one very brief moment, she stroked him through the opening in his jeans, brushing the soft cotton of his boxers against his heated flesh.
Panting heavily, he leaned into the wall. Keeping his eyes closed, he forced himself to forget the doubts, which proved shockingly easy as she pressed his pants all the way open, sliding one hand along his length.
“Oh . . . shit, Jules,” he murmured. “That feels good.”
Too damned good, a tiny voice reminded him as he moved his hips forward, thrusting slightly in reaction to her caress. Dangerous to your heart, your sanity.
“Yes, feels very good,” she agreed on a sigh. “Your manhood is so warm. Even through this cotton, I can’t believe how . . . alive it feels.”
“It’s . . . me. Part of me,” he explained, dropping his head forward. He kept his eyes shut but felt the tickle of his long hair fall across his face. He caught her wrist with a groan, reaching for some remnant of self-control. “Jules . . . stop.”
“Why?” Her voice was quiet, confused.
He forced his eyes open, panting roughly. Drawing in hot, ragged breaths. “Because you’re a virgin,” he replied softly. “I can’t take advantage . . .”
She smiled at him, lovely eyes narrowing. “It’s not taking advantage when I’m asking, Aristos.”
With a toss of his head, he flung his hair out of his face. “I have to be honorable, no matter how bad we want to get right to it,” he said at last.
She reached a shaky hand to his cheek, resting it there with steadfast reassurance. “I know what I want. What I always wanted. You were coming to me for this”—she paused, sliding her other hand low along his right hip—“that night. We’ve waited far too long.”
“But are you sure?” he asked, searching her face. “About me . . . about . . . ?” Damn, it was the twenty-first century, but his once-adopted Victorian sensibilities had him blushing and stammering like a freak show. “Certain about making love?”
She stepped back and, reaching behind her neck, began unfastening the top buttons of her dress. The heat and invitation in her long stare as she did so were unmistakable. “I want to finish what never should have been taken from us.”
Her body was burning. With the full return of physical sensation, and being so near Aristos, a driving need had overtaken Juliana. She’d never experienced anything so rough and sexual when she was alive. Alive the first time, she corrected herself, as she stared up at the large, gorgeous Greek man in front of her.
He had changed, his hair long to his shoulders, his body more muscular. He’d always been tremendous, larger than any other man she’d met, but now he seemed more gorgeously defined, in every part of his frame. Broader shoulders, thicker chest, stronger thighs.
And where she’d just touched him, well, she’d never been privy to that part before, but it certainly felt shockingly large. Were all men endowed thusly, with a member that she could not even accommodate with the full length of her palm? Surely the Adonis before her was unique in that way as well. She shivered, imagining how her own virginal body might accommodate such length and thickness, but kept on unfastening the buttons of her dress.
If she wavered, she might lose him, at least in this matter tonight. He’d been too hurt by her death, by his false assumption that she’d turned away from what he was. His heart was in a vulnerable place regarding her return, and the only way to convince him of her true feelings was by giving her body to him. Of that she was certain. And the hooded, ravenous look in his dark eyes—the flush upon his swarthy cheeks—they revealed his desire. And his own love for her.
His black eyes narrowed, and he pushed off the wall, growling low in the back of his throat. It was a threatening sound, a possessive one as he stalked closer. She shivered and then stood taller, dropping her hands to her sides. She couldn’t reach the other buttons; Ari would have to unfasten them. Ari would undress her, unravel her, deflower her, she thought, swallowing hard in anticipation.
One look and she saw that he remained powerfully aroused, his thick erection having worked its way out of his undergarments, revealing its dark-skinned, very male reality. Flushing, he began arranging himself, fumbling with his zipper. “I want you, Juliana, same as ever, as much as ever. But I can’t go this fast. I have too many questions, fears. I have a lot to figure out . . . and you deserve to be treated like a lady.”
“I don’t care about that!” she cried. “All I want is for you to understand how much I love you. That I never stopped.”
Ari looked away, such pain and remorse in his dark eyes that she had to stifle a cry. “I want to believe that.”
She put her arms around him, holding tight. “Why would I have possibly left you willingly?”
He said nothing and slowly released her. “That’s what I’ve gotta figure out.”
Releasing a weary sigh, his big fingers moved to the collar of her dress, working at the buttons awkwardly. She felt the rough calluses on the pads of his fingers briefly, and ached for those hands to move beneath the dress’s fabric, to find their way to her hips, to trace the length of her backbone. She sighed softly, swaying back into him, but he only gave her collar a tug, finishing the buttons. Instead of his embrace, or the heat of his breath against her exposed nape, there was only the tight, confining strictures of her gown, and the corset underneath.
“Come on,” he said with a rueful smile. “Let’s see if Emma can’t find you a room around this place.”
Chapter 14
Nikos had offered to drive Mason home since he didn’t have his own car at the compound. They’d headed downtown first, grabbing a few beers at one of Savannah’s oldest establishments, Pinkie Masters. The thick smoke and loud country music had provided good cover for Mason’s introverted mood. Sometimes the man just needed to keep one foot in the normal realm, and Nik understood that.
In fact, he understood a lot about Mason Angel, including the memories that lived behind his pensive green ey
es. Distraction was always the order of the day when Mason’s past proved too much, even if it meant hanging together in silence. As a Spartan, Nik wasn’t threatened by quiet; perhaps that was the reason Mason felt so comfortable around him.
They rode in silence now, Mason staring out the window, Nikos desperate for something—anything at all—to say or do to provide continued distraction. His mind grasped at the possibilities. Take Mace on a walk down his family’s mile-long driveway; get him to put on the DVD of Aliens . . . again. Hell, he’d do anything if it kept Mason from retreating into the dark place that had seized him earlier tonight, especially since that thousand-yard stare had finally vanished from his eyes after the past six months.
Mason had finally confessed the real source of that sad, distant expression in August, the admission changing the stakes between them permanently. Mason had let Nik behind the wire, admitting what even his own siblings didn’t know: that he’d lost his lover while serving his final tour in Iraq. Not to an IED or sniper attack, but to the worse kind of insurgency—a supernatural one.
Sergeant Kelly O’Connell had been slain by a female Djinn, one who’d lusted after Mason during his deployment. When she realized that Mason wasn’t attracted to females at all, particularly not those of the demonic variety, she revealed herself for what she truly was: a grotesque, devouring creature. Then she’d attacked Kelly as payback, leaving him to die in Mason’s arms.
That had been the beginning of the pain—the charade that followed perhaps even worse. In the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military, Mason had pretended that Kelly was only his good buddy, another of their fellow marines lost to the war. That grief, Nikos knew, had been eating Mace apart for almost a year.
At least that demon had done her work on Kelly swiftly. Watching Mason struggle with his secrets and pain, still refusing to tell his siblings about that loss, or his sexual orientation, was excruciatingly slow torture. Sometimes Nik fantasized about carting Shay and Jamie off to the beach, confessing everything they didn’t know about their beautiful, fierce brother. In fact, if he’d thought Mason’s survival depended upon that kind of betrayal, he might actually have done it.
Except lately, the light had appeared in Mason’s eyes again, for the first time since Nikos had known him. Shay had seen it, too, remarking that Nikos alone had been able to reach him. Such a bond was natural between fellow warriors, he’d tried telling her at the time—right after he’d saved Mason’s leg, maybe his life, in a wicked demon battle.
She’d dismissed his denials, insisting that Nikos had a special way with the man; she’d seen it herself. That comment had returned to him in the past months, making him wonder whether Shay suspected just how attached he’d become to her big brother—or that he’d never wanted a woman in his entire life. He’d given Sparta a son out of duty and had lost his one true love at Thermopylae, just as Mason had lost Kelly in Iraq. There was a bond between them, all right, just not the kind he’d confess to anyone.
“Thanks for tonight,” Mason said quietly, the sudden words causing Nik to jolt. They’d been riding in silence for miles. It was a good thirty minutes back to the Angel plantation from the city, and they were almost there.
“It was nothing,” Nikos told him with a shrug. “Not a big deal, seriously.”
“That’s not true.” Mason’s husky-deep voice was as sultry as ever. “I needed you tonight, Nik. And you were right there for me. Thanks, man.”
Nikos swallowed, eyes firmly fixed on the road. I needed you. He blinked, feeling his body tighten. I needed you.
Mason slung an arm over the back of Nikos’s seat, a painful proximity. “You talked me down earlier,” he continued. “I don’t know how you always manage to neutralize my craziness, but you do.”
“I’ve spent my time in the trenches. We speak the same language because of that. Have the same values.”
“The marines worship the Spartans. You do know that, right?” Mason laughed. “They’d shit themselves if they knew how tight I hang with you now.”
“Perhaps you should invite them for a day of training with Leonidas,” Nik suggested with the straightest face he could manage.
Mason rolled his eyes. “Any idea how many of my buddies got lambda tattoos because they wanted to identify with your homeland? They chose the Lacedaemon symbol instead of wearing Spartan crimson into battle, I guess.”
“Too bad,” Nikos said. “Good for mopping up your enemy’s blood.”
“You’d make a perfect marine, Nikos. But sometimes I wonder how bad I’d have sucked as a Spartan. Leonidas would’ve probably booted me out of town.”
Nik cast him a glance. “You were a captain in the corps. That didn’t happen by accident, Mace. And you weren’t even thirty? Isn’t that quick advancement?”
Mason lolled his head against the seat, dropping his arm back down. “Somewhere along the way, I lost it. My mind, my ability to deal with shit. You saw me tonight. You saw how I reacted to that creature. And I’m telling you, she is a demon. You believe me, right, Nik? She’s not human, and if Ari and everyone else tries to tell me she is, that’s gonna be a big problem. I know demons. I’ve got the sight; I’ve had it most of my life, and the look in that thing’s eyes was brutal. Vicious. Starved. I’ve seen it before . . .”
“In Iraq,” Nik finished for him.
Mason glanced away, tracing a pattern on the window. “For only a moment, like a flash of lightning . . . but it was exactly the way that female Djinn looked at me back in the desert.” Mason shivered slightly beside him. “Ari better be careful if they don’t take her on out tonight, man. I’m serious. You should call him and check.” Mason rooted around between them, producing his own BlackBerry, and then tried to hand it to Nik. “Call him now. Make sure they’re gonna off the little bitch.” He gave the phone a shake.
Mason was desperate, Nikos realized. And desperate, anxious Mason—the erratic bursts of energy and chattiness as opposed to his usual pensive quiet when upset—was more unsettling than any of those lost-eyed looks.
Nik made a turn onto the Isle of Hope, thankful they were almost to the plantation. There were probably only two or three minutes left; then he could put the car in park and give Mason his full attention.
Mace waved the phone again. “You gonna call Ari or what, man?”
“Let’s get to your place first. Then we can talk.”
“Shit, just the thought of being in that drafty old house is more than creepy after tonight.” Then Mason brightened, lifting an eyebrow. “I should’ve offed that little demon myself and then just crashed with you.”
Nik’s breath hitched. “You could certainly have stayed the night with me.” As soon as the words were past his lips, he realized that he’d murmured them like an invitation straight into his bedroom.
Mason tensed slightly beside him. It took a soldier to notice that slight change in another’s breathing rate, the subtle shift in the way a man held himself. “I could’ve stayed the night, sure,” Mason agreed evenly.
“I . . . No, I didn’t mean . . . Skata, not that, Angel.”
“I know exactly what you meant,” he replied in that lazy-accented Southern voice of his. The one that felt like warm cider sliding down your throat on a frigid morning.
Mason shifted in the seat, slinging his left arm along the back of Nik’s seat again.
Nik was keenly aware of the curling hairs along that forearm, the sexy gleam of his masculine wristwatch. No, that’s just a relaxed gesture between good friends. Between fighting partners.
That litany worked for a few seconds, until he caught a glimpse of Mason’s eyes. The distant, haunted expression from earlier was almost entirely gone—replaced by a furnace blast’s worth of heat.
Nikos felt the flames of that fire reach his own face and stared straight ahead. “I only meant that you could have used one of the ten million sofas in that house as a rack.”
“Ten million? That many, you think?” Mason drawled.
“At lea
st ten, so there’d be somewhere for you to make your bed, I’m sure,” Nikos stammered. “Next time, keep it in mind.”
“Nah,” Mason told him languidly, leaning just a little closer. “I think I would have preferred your room. After executing the she-demon, of course. Crashing with you would be some sweet dreaming after a mercy kill like that one.”
“On my floor.”
“Now, I can’t see that working out, can you?” Mason laughed bemusedly. “I’ve slept on the hoods of Humvees, in sand-filled tents, and in dug-out snow caves. But your floor, Nikos? Not doing it.”
“It is carpeted.”
“That is beside the much larger point, my friend.”
To that, Nikos could think of absolutely nothing to say, besides the fact that he wasn’t sure whether Mason was simply joking around. Nik got his answer as he made the final turn onto the plantation’s main drive.
“This heat between us,” Mason murmured with a slow shake of his head. “It just never goes away, does it?”
Nik pulled the Mountaineer onto the side of the drive. He parked it and cut the engine, turning toward Mason. The world around them formed a cocoon of pure blackness, with the live oaks along the drive swaying in the stormy wind. The only illumination between them was the dashboard clock light, its pale green allowing him to see Mason’s eyes and face. Myriad emotions were in that expression. Longing, a little bit of flirtation, and humor. But the never-ending sadness still lurked there, too. That lonely look was suddenly something Nik longed to kiss far, far away.
He reached, sliding a hand along Mason’s nape, and moved closer, angling for that very kiss.
“Don’t, Nikos.” Mason broke the slow-motion spell by ducking sideways at the last moment.
Nik found himself cozying up to the leather of Mason’s seat, feeling like an utter idiot. He shoved off of it, retreating to his corner of the car, face blazing hot. “Fuck that.”
“I don’t . . . I shouldn’t have taken things so far,” Mason said earnestly. “I’m sorry, man. Really sorry.”
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