Forsaken

by Jacquelyn Frank

  She didn’t think it would have hurt to hear him say that, but it did. And it was a deep hurt. As if he were already her lover, as if he’d already told her he loved her with all his heart and soul, and then told her he had changed his mind.

  But unlike a Night Angel male, he was unable to read her scroll and see the depth of that pain. She somehow managed to keep it out of her expression too, otherwise he would never have believed her when she said, “I’m okay. I promise you, I’m going to be all right with that.”

  It was like setting him free. All of the confusion between them that had caused their passion to seem stilted and jerky evaporated. The minute he returned his mouth to hers, the minute she absolved him of any responsibility, he became a different being.

  The electricity of kissing another Night Angel was something familiar and expected, but somehow Leo’s kisses began to convey an even more powerful current. There was so much hunger behind it that she could hardly breathe. His hand slid down her side and thigh, quickly sweeping beneath the skirt of her dress. When she tensed, afraid he was going to skip all the niceties now that she’d devalued herself to the worth of a brief one-night stand, she was amazingly mistaken. He merely pulled her leg tight against his hip.

  No. He didn’t skip any of the niceties at all. He kissed her with the hot, fiery need of a new lover, like when the flirting and mating dance was done and the physical act was on the cusp of resolving. She found her arms hooked beneath his, her hands latching on to his broad shoulders, just touching him there, just touching him anywhere was giving her the complete impression of the strength he harbored in his body. He breathed hard and hot into her mouth, his craving for her more than thoroughly announced by the deep masculine groan he let roll out of him.

  “My god,” he said against her lips, his tongue punctuating every word he said with a lustful stroke. “I can feel your heat against me.”

  To emphasize what he meant, he pressed his thigh tightly against her sex. The pressure sent off a wild rush of arousal and she gasped.

  “I can’t wait to get my hands on that,” he said heatedly. “Not to mention my mouth.”

  She went utterly and absolutely wet. The promise was unbearable and she moaned deeply under the onslaught of it.

  “Seems like you’re pretty damn eager too,” he said with a chuckle, dragging his kisses away from her mouth and burning a path down her throat. She felt his teeth catching her skin in the smallest little impressions of a bite. She felt his hand rushing up the line of her body and streaking from thigh to hip to waist to ribs and then…then he caught the weight of her breast in his hand just in time to hold her up to his mouth.

  He could have unbuttoned the bodice of the dress easily and exposed her, but he didn’t. Instead he mouthed her through the thin fabric, the stroke of his tongue muted and dampening the cloth, but electric and unbelievably arousing. Her nipples distended, as though yearning for the promise of his bare mouth. She moaned softly as her hands crawled up restlessly into his collar and hair. There was just too much fabric between them. She was frustrated by it and it must have transmitted because he gave her a chuckle.

  “Trouble?” he asked, his breath warm through her dress as it tumbled over her.

  “Take your shirt off,” she commanded him, tugging at his collar for emphasis.

  He went very still. As still as a wild animal crouching in the grasses, waiting for a predator to pass them by. But it only lasted a moment, such a brief moment that she thought she had imagined it by the time he pulled away from her.

  He rose up on his knees and, grabbing it by the collar at the back of his neck, he stripped off his shirt. The shock of what she saw was like a cold-handed slap across her face. On his right side, splayed over his ribs and wrapped halfway around his body was a massive tattoo. But that wasn’t what made her breath catch in her throat. No…it was that everywhere, streaked left and right, vertically and horizontally and diagonally, almost every single inch of his chest was covered in angry red weals of flesh. He had been injured and was healing, but it was more than obvious that he had not healed enough.

  “Oh my god! Leo!”

  This, she realized as her shaking hands went to his injured skin, touching it with fierce fragility, this was what had been done to him. It looked horrifyingly like someone had cut strips of flesh from him, and just looking at the grim set of his jaw she knew that it had been exactly that and that he had been awake for every last one of them.

  It was no wonder he hated them all.

  His scroll was lit up with brilliance as a storm of emotions marched through him. Passion and rage. Craving and hate. Wanting and resolution. Need and vengeance. It was a battle between what he was feeling with her right in that moment and what he had swimming in his heart and the memories connected with the injuries he had suffered. He caught her shaking hands in his, made her look into the dark chocolate of his eyes.

  “This is not all of who I am and it doesn’t matter in this moment. I need for it to not matter between us, Faith.”

  And she saw that it was very much the truth. He wanted something new and good to wash away the muck and poison of the rage and impotence he felt every time he remembered what had happened to him.

  And she wanted more than anything to give that to him. Using her captured hands to pull him back down to her, she reached for and caught his mouth. She swept her tongue over his lower lip in an erotic invitation, drawing his focus to her mouth. He let go of her hands to brace a hand beside her head, kissing her as deeply as breathing would allow, yet holding his torso up and away from lying against her.

  She was sorry her shock had interrupted their passion, but she was determined to win it back. It really wasn’t difficult at all. Her entire body still burned for him, against his denim clad thigh she was still wet for him. She reached for the buttons on her dress, determined to rid herself of the frustrating clothing she wore. Faith almost never wore clothes, especially as it was a little painful to use her wings through the confines of clothing. Of course, she made the exception where clothes were concerned when she had to travel in the human world of daylight. But she had chosen this dress because of the light, breezy fit of it so she didn’t feel as confined.

  Now it was frustrating her, an obstacle in the way of her desire to be touched. And Leo, damn him, was clearly laughing at her expense.

  “Stop that and help me,” she growled at him impatiently.

  “Your wish is my command,” he said with amusement. “Consider me your personal Djynn.” He moved her hand away from the stubborn buttons, pausing a moment to cup the swelling shape of her left breast before finally reaching for the first closed button. “But if I grant you this wish,” he said as he popped the thing free with an easy brush of his fingers, “you know there’s going to be a price to pay.”

  “There’s always a price to pay for wishes,” she agreed breathily. Watching him undress her with such excruciating slowness felt like dying a little from deprivation.

  “Always,” he agreed, the second button slipping free. “And I’m going to ask a very high price for this wish.”

  “Oh?” It was less of a word and more of a sigh as it escaped her.

  “Yes. Do you want to know what it is going to be?”

  She nodded as the third button was undone. She couldn’t have formed a coherent word if it was required to save her life, because now, with every unbound button, he was pausing to stroke ever-so-light sweeps of his fingers over whatever flesh was newly exposed. It was mostly the line of her breastbone, and she arched her back a little to try to let her breast come into his sight more fully. But the bodice was too snug and her breasts too full to allow for it. He continued to work the buttons free, and it frustrated her that they ran the entire length of the dress. She was quite certain they weren’t meant to be undone completely. Didn’t he remember they were working with very limited time? She could feel the approach of daylight creeping along the follicles of her hair.

  “Surrender,” he exh
aled against the skin of her upper belly. “Complete and total and utter surrender.”

  Faith felt yet another button give way and now his tongue was drawing a heated circle around the outside of her navel. At that point she had no choice but to lose patience. If he was working to frustrate her, he was doing a bang-up job of it, but she’d had just about enough of it.

  Apparently, so had he. Impatience blared through his scroll, and suddenly he was surging up onto his knees, reaching for both halves of her dress and with a yank that oozed barely repressed ferocity, he peeled apart the bodice, jerking the dress down her shoulders and arms, forcing her to wriggle them free or else find herself tied down by her clothing. She couldn’t stand the idea of that so she let him strip her to her waist.

  “Jesus,” he said on a quick breath as he looked down at her. “How did I not see it before?”

  “See what?” she asked shakily as she watched him reach toward her with fascinated fingers. He touched her along the bottom swell of her left breast.

  “That you aren’t as universally black as I first perceived you as being. That, like your lips, you’re actually a very deep violet at your nipples and…”

  He went back to her buttons, this time working quickly. She knew what he was looking for and it made her entire body flame with a flush. In another instant she was naked beneath him and he was reaching to touch searching fingertips to the nude pillow of flesh protecting the entrance to more darkly violet parts of her. He moved his touch down and separated the lips of her sex, spreading her wide so he could inspect the color variation more thoroughly.

  “Here,” he finished his sentence at last. “Such a pretty, dark color.” He let his fingers slide into the very wet folds of her flesh and she heard him growl with pleasure. She knew it was because she was so obviously aroused by him. And as one hand explored her there, the free hand came back to the task of shaping and toying with her breasts. The full strokes, touches, and the plucking of his fingertips on her nipples felt incredibly glorious and astoundingly frustrating all at once.

  Then, as if knowing a complaint was brewing behind her lips, he lowered his head to her, the dart of his tongue caressed and painted her nipple, catching the beaded tip of it between his teeth then sucking her hard against his palate.

  It was like throwing gasoline on a banked fire. They went from idling desire straight to virulent passion. Their mouths crashed together, tongues tangling. Leo forgot about keeping her from touching his chest as he lost himself in her savage mouth. He stroked her sex with swirls of movement until she was taut with expectant nerves.

  “Please,” she panted when she next came up for air. “Please!”

  He could have teased her or tormented her some more, she supposed. She was, after all, an easy mark at that point. But it spoke volumes of his own impassioned investment as he left off from touching her in order to unbutton and unzip his jeans. Freed from its cruel prison, his erection made a sudden and stunning appearance. She reached for him even as he pulled her hips down a little farther on the couch cushions.

  “Sweet mother of God,” he groaned when she wrapped her hand around him tightly. He thrust forward into her fingers, a heated curse erupting from him as she made thorough work of learning him by touch. He was doing the same, his fingers drenched by her saturated intimate flesh. The next instant he was thrusting an impatient finger up into her body, and then he made it a pair. She gasped, raising her hips toward the invasion of his touch.

  He was so hot and heavy in her hands. She’d never had a human lover, and knew of very few Night Angels who ever had in their long lifetimes, but she’d always thought they would pale beside a lover from her own species. How wrong she had been. His fervor alone was something so different for her. Night Angel males were so cool, aloof to the point, sometimes, of looking like they didn’t really care one way or another. But this was so not true of Leo. He ran hot and made her run at equally blistering temperatures.

  He thrust his fingers up into her again and again until she was calling out her increasing pleasure again and again.

  “I could make you come just like this,” he said hotly against her ear. “Over and over, let you burn yourself up like a little melting candle. But I’m not going to. Not this time.”

  And before she could stop it, her heart took flight at his words. Not this time. Which meant he wasn’t planning on doing this just once. She tried to rein herself in but she was running on pure adrenaline and couldn’t control herself. He pulled his hand free of her, pushed her thighs apart with a dominant surge of his hips, putting himself in bald contact with her heat. So eager was she that her back arched and pleasure swam through her. Pleasure as close as she could possibly get to orgasm but not quite. But the fluid movement of her own body made a stark contrast to the sudden inflexibility of his. He was very still again. Breathing hard, his muscular body tense and defined with need, he cursed.

  How could he be so stupid? It had never entered his mind, not once, until he felt that stark touch of intimate flesh to intimate flesh. It was something he never did. Never once. Not bareback that is.

  A condom. He didn’t have a goddamn condom. It wasn’t as though he had ever thought for even an instant when setting out on this little adventure that he would need one. But he’d always had one in his wallet because, you know, you just never know. He was always up for unexpected pleasures. But he had been stripped of everything because of Chatha, and that included his wallet, his I.D., and his emergency condom.

  Fuck.

  “Faith,” he rasped roughly near her ear. “We…I can’t…”

  But she felt so incredibly good. Good enough to outweigh his fears and his sense of self-protection. And because he could feel that, because the temptation rode him that hard, he pulled away from her. He was off her and on his feet in the next heartbeat, stumbling with an awkward lack of coordination. He was a coward and turned his back on the shock written across her features. What the hell do you have to feel so bad about? You’re doing the right thing, his conscience whispered fiercely to him.

  He heard her move and he grabbed his shirt up from the floor shielding himself with it as he tried to explain to certain body parts that there was no relief or fun in the immediate future. Why didn’t he explain himself? He didn’t know. Maybe because he was just as disappointed as he knew she was?

  When he was finally able to redress himself he turned to her, running an agitated hand through his hair. She was sitting up, knees primly together, hands clasped loosely on her thighs. She had not buttoned her dress back up, and he found it incongruous until he remembered she was wearing clothing as an afterthought.

  But it was her stricken expression that hit him to the quick, and it made his heart ache.

  “No, no, no, no,” he soothed, hurrying to kneel before her, grabbing up her hands and squeezing them tightly. “This isn’t about you. This isn’t a rejection in the smallest of ways. Look at me,” he commanded, making her look into his eyes. He saw they were wet with unshed tears and he realized…for the very first time he really saw her for the gentle, emotional soul that she was. What Grey had showed him was only the surface, but it all rang loudly in his head. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be passionate. She wanted to be a mother one day and have a family and be…be happy.

  “It’s just an inconvenience,” he said softly, bringing her tense fingers to the kiss of his lips. “It’s just the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong circumstances. Come here,” he said. Pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. He whispered into her ear. “There is nothing I want more than to make love with you right now. Don’t you dare doubt that. But…I’m not the kind of guy who has unprotected sex with anything that moves and turns his back on the possible consequences. Especially not with you.”

  He felt her tense and he pulled back to see her wounded look.

  “Faith! Look at me! I mean I won’t risk getting you pregnant knowing what I do about how damn dangerous pregnancy is for a Night Angel
woman. Christ, do you think I’d be that careless? That thoughtless of you?”

  She shook her head, but still she was silent, and then he realized it was because it was taking everything she had not to give in to tears. He had handled this badly, had insulted her unintentionally, and he’d confused her before making himself clear. In short, he was a dick.

  He sighed, deflating as he rested his forehead against her knee.

  “I suppose ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to cut it?”

  “No. I mean, it’s fine,” she said at last. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for. This was a crazy idea all around. I mean, I’m a Night Angel. A Nightwalker. And you don’t…well, it’s different worlds, isn’t it? If not for Grey’s tampering, we wouldn’t even have considered…anyway, it’s like you said. It’s for the best.”

  She stood up and walked away from him, leaving him there on his knees. What she was saying was very true, Leo acknowledged.

  So why did it sting like a rejection so damn bad?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “This form is so limiting,” Apep observed, once again inspecting himself in the mirror. “I can’t sense things as well as I should. It’s seriously curtailing my omniscience. However, as time goes on it should improve. I am, after all, me. But it does leave me with a little bit of a problem.”

  “Oh?” Chatha asked. He had taken a break from his dissecting amusements. Because he had the power to heal, he could do his experiments to a certain point and then heal his object of study; at the moment the little white rabbit was hopping around the room in confusion. What he found the most fascinating was finding the point where healing could no longer occur. What, exactly, was too far? When was that invisible line crossed? It was an art form, truly, to know exactly when that crucial moment was. That was why he had to practice on the smaller life forms. To perfect his craft.

  “Yes, it does. I can’t see clearly what is happening at that little farm in New Mexico. I went to retrieve Kamen, that foolish man, so he could come back and worship me like he ought to have done, but then that Night Angel interfered. Come to think of it, I owe her a bit of comeuppance,” Apep said, straightening his spine at the sudden inspiration. “Yes. Let’s find that little bitch of a Night Angel and show her that she can’t be rude to a god and expect to get away with it. It’s my duty to do so.”