17
The second we landed on the rooftop I jumped out of his arms. It all made sense, the flaming sword, his ability to be undetected around us, how fast he moved and his abilities to do things I’d never seen any other breed of monster do.
He’d flown us up with one powerful surge of his massive wings, and my hands were shaking like someone had just shot me up with ten vials of adrenaline.
“Angel and demon. A little cliché, don’t you think?” He chuckled, tucking his wings back into wherever he hid them.
My fingers twitched as I recalled a long-forgotten memory of me gliding my hands down his back and thinking the fact that he had two large vertical ridges running down it was weird.
“Are you saying you are or aren’t? ’Cause I don’t do angels—bad things happen when you guys fall.”
“Relax, little demon. I’m no angel.” He walked over to where I was and I reluctantly let him drag me back to his side.
“You’ve got wings.” If he wanted me to spell it out for him I would. Tapping my foot, I gave him a minute to answer before I forced it out of him. I wasn’t exactly sure I was strong enough to hold him down if he didn’t want me to, but I’d try anyway.
“Read the—”
“If you tell me to read that damn book one more time, I’ll cut your tongue out.” I snapped my fingers in his face.
Swatting my hand away, he chuckled. “Anyone ever tell you have a temper?”
“Oh no, never.” I widened my eyes. “You think I have an attitude now, keep toying with me, Priest.”
Slapping my ass, he grinned when I just about jumped out of my skin. “Watch the south and east; I’ll keep my eyes on the north and west sides.”
“Did you really just slap my ass? Really?” I rubbed my still-stinging cheek.
“I seem to remember a certain demon who had way too much fun at my expense one night not too long ago. Turnabout is only fair.”
He was of course referring to the “daddy” fetish incident. “You’re a jerk.” I sniffed but couldn’t keep from grunting when he tickled my ribs.
Slapping him away, I pointed at the opposite end of the building. “Behave or you’re going to the corner. And what in the hell has gotten into you? You are so not the guy I knew.”
It got quiet after a while, so I studied the street, keeping an eye out for the blue-dress girl.
“Keep looking while I talk,” he said in a soft tone. “For years I’ve imagined what it would be like to actually meet you, Pandora. To meet you and not have you fear me, but to have you look at me the way I’ve looked at you for so long.”
I gripped the railing, standing absolutely still.
“But I always believed that day would never come, because unless certain things happened, I had never planned to reveal myself to you. The day I did, it was because a colleague of mine had learned of your whereabouts. For years I’d covered your tracks, but one of yours had gotten sloppy in Tennessee, got herself killed by a priest, and suddenly your location was once again known. Once I’d ascertained that the colleague hadn’t divulged it to anyone else, I had to take him out. That’s why I came at you with the amount of force I did. To throw off your scent again so that no one else could learn of you.”
I turned in his direction. “You killed a priest?” I gasped. I’d felt eyes on me constantly back in South Dakota and never imagined for a second it was another priest.
He nodded toward the street, which was once again swelling with a human tide. The parade was well under way now. The bands were playing, revelers were dancing and shouting, singing and fighting, all signs of an exceptionally run fiesta. Bubba’s almonds smelled divine, even from way up here, and my mouth watered for a taste. I was hungry again. Weird.
“I told you not to look back. Pay attention, Pandora.”
Grumbling, I turned. “You’re bossy.”
He ignored that jab.
“And I can’t tell you who I killed without revealing things. But my point is this, you have to understand that while I may seem like I’m coming on strong, for me this isn’t new. I’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time, little demon.”
“Okay, that’s it.” I turned and burrowed my way into his arms because how could a girl not want to hug a man who’d basically just told her he felt exactly as she did? It was a scientific impossibility. (Look it up if you don’t believe me, I’m not lying.)
He sighed, obviously realizing I was going to break all his rules. The sooner he accepted that, the better things would be.
“Ash, if you’re telling me this because of what I just said, I didn’t say it because I’m scared. Well, I am scared, but not because I don’t want it too. I’m scared because I want it too much. My life is a shit storm right now.”
Tipping my chin up, his eyes caressed me. “That’s why I’m here.”
“And are you going to leave when it’s over?” I swear I could feel the beat of my pulse on the back of my tongue as I waited for his response.
“What do you think?”
Then he kissed me and I gasped from the electric slide of velvet lips on my own. There was no tongue—we both knew what would happen if we went down that road—but he sucked and nibbled and worked me up to a frenzy of need anyway. It didn’t take much to make a lust demon get randy—just sayin’.
“Your eyes are glowing,” he whispered when we finally came up for air.
And I was just about to tell him I don’t know what when I spotted a flash of blue that immediately killed the need for banter.
“Ash, look.” I pointed at the girl who was now on the other side of the road, staring up at me, still holding tight to her basket of mums.
I made to trace after her, but he shook his head. “There are too many humans around.”
Impatience and an all-encompassing sixth sense had me pleading. “You don’t understand. Any other time someone has vanished like this on me, the next time I’ve seen them, they were zombies. There mere fact that she’s there...” I gestured toward her but growled when I realized that once again the girl in blue had vanished.
His eyes were piercing as he eyed the street below. “She’s gone.”
“I should have gone after all.”
“No. You shouldn’t have. For all you know, the Order is trying to lure you out into the open. We stay up here, we study, and then we formulate a plan.”
Tapping his chest with my fist, I sighed. “That how you got to be such a lean mean killing machine?”
His lip twitched. “Something like that.”
We spotted the girl again, one more time after that. And just like last time, she once again vanished. This time she’d been walking through the graveyard before stopping at a tombstone, where she reached into her basket to get a mum to set on the grave.
But unlike the last two times when I’d looked away before noticing her absence, she literally vanished in front of our eyes. There one minute, gone the next. Like a mirage on hot asphalt, she winked out of existence.
The strangest part of it all was that no else seemed to notice or be startled by it. Even though the graveyard was full of people and thousands of candles were lit and she should have been seen, no one turned.
The rest of the night was a wash. The parade went off without a hitch. Remembering the flower she’d laid down, I rushed to the graveyard once Asher and I came off the roof. The streets were littered with trash but empty of people.
A balmy, nippy breeze rolled in from the east and I just knew that the grave the girl had placed the flower on belonged to Paz.
I wasn’t surprised at all to find a waxy-petaled bloom on it. Grabbing it, I held it under Asher’s nose. “This is a message.”
He nodded. “But of what, we’ll have to wait and see. Let’s go home, little demon, grab a few hours of sleep, and tomorrow we’ll start to work our way through all this. If that was a message—”
“It is.” I nodded my head emphatically.
Waving away my words, he shrugged. “She will find us. Worrying about it when we can’t do anything is pointless.”
I hated to admit he was right.
“Yeah, fine.” I tucked the flower behind my ear and then slipped my arm through his. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about those sexy wings of yours. Know this, Priest, I’m gonna get to the bottom of you too.”
Straight white teeth flashed at me. “I look forward to it.”
Snorting, I gave less than a heartfelt chuckle. “Should I trace us?”
“Or you know, I could just sweep you off your feet and fly us straight to heaven.”
I laughed, wrapped my arms around him and clamped tight to his ear so that he hissed before I whispered, “Don’t tempt a demon, Priest, you’ll never win that war.”
The second we got home, he passed out on the bed. While I was jealous of his ability to just zone out, I was wide awake, my mind buzzing with way too many thoughts and ideas.
He moaned when I crawled out from under the sheets and attempted to latch back onto me. Biting my lip, I traced the curve of his jaw with my finger, still weirded out by the fact that I could. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His dimple winked at me and my heart summersaulted. I quickly snatched the book of poems off the desk and then turned on a reading lamp.
“That bother you?” I asked when he rolled over.
“You’re reading the book, I’m not going to complain.” His deep voice made my nipples tingle. I was seriously nuts not to just bang this guy already, but prolonging the inevitable was only making it so much better.
Of course, the flip side of that meant there was a distinct possibility he’d never live up the expectations created, but I somehow doubted that.
“Go to sleep, Priest.” I sniffed but couldn’t help but grin at his soft chuckle. I stared at him until his breathing evened out. He really was beautiful. There was a light dusting of stubble on his jaw and I totally had a Pretty Woman moment. Touching my fingers to my lips I kissed them, then pressed them to his own mouth.
He nipped them gently but was back asleep in seconds.
As hard as it sometimes was to trust anyone, I knew, just knew in my heart of hearts that I could trust him. He was sleeping in my bed, nude, without a weapon in sight. Completely defenseless against me—in my world there could be no greater sign of trust than to become vulnerable. They say actions speak louder than words. In my years I’ve learned that saying is absolutely true.
He kept demanding I read the book. He wanted me to learn him, understand and solve the mystery of why he’d been following me, tracking me... Well, then, I’d do what I must.
“Okay, Priest,” I whispered, “speak to me.” Flipping the book open to page one, I read it intently, looking for any hint or clues of what I might have missed.
Three hours later, eyes red and burning, head pounding as the sun began its gradual ascent across the sky, I snapped the book shut. I’d learned nothing, but I wasn’t defeated.
Sliding down until my face was pressed against his shoulder, I rubbed against it once, yawned, and smiled when he wrapped me up in his strong arms.
I would figure him out. It was only a matter of when.
***
The hot sun blasted through the window. Asher hadn’t moved a muscle since I’d passed out. He must have been incredibly exhausted, and it was adorable the way his mouth was slightly parted. His familiar scent of sandalwood saturated my nostrils. He always smelled so good; it was one of the many things I liked about him. I was coated in his scent and knew I wasn’t going to be taking a shower this morning. I wanted his stamp on me, wanted the connection of him lingering all over.
I didn’t care if my family figured out that I was breaking a demon’s cardinal rule. That I was falling in love with this amazing, terrifying, beautiful man who was still a mystery to me in so many ways.
Clutching the sheet to my breasts, I traced my finger down the length of his spine, grinning when his lips curled and a rumbling moan spilled from his throat.
“Come back to bed, little demon,” he murmured, tossing his strong arm across my lap to pull me closer. “There’s nowhere we have to be for hours yet. Enjoy the rare afternoon off.”
I’d learned these past two nights that Asher ran extremely warm—he didn’t stay under the sheets for long, which was fine by me because it meant my greedy gaze got to feast on him whenever I wanted to. He was pure grit and muscle, smooth and all hard lines, but with the kind of sloping grace reminiscent of a swimmer’s body. The only mar on him was the numerous scars, which I sorta liked.
My heart fluttered and Lust purred. She could appreciate the sight of a man’s perfectly shaped ass. But as much as we wanted him, the frenetic need we’d felt the first time we’d seen him wasn’t obsessive.
Threaded between the lust of our need were glistening, powerful strings of something much greater, deeper, and fuller.
Those strings, while thin and seemingly insignificant, were ten times more powerful than the need of the flesh. Leaning over, I planted a kiss on his shoulder, delighted when his smooth muscle flexed tight beneath my touch.
He moved like lightning; in less time than it took me to blink, he’d rolled over and had me caged in his arms, forcing me to rest my hands on the bed so as not to fall.
“Where are you going, little demon?”
He knew me so well. Transferring all my weight to one arm, I pushed hair out of his eyes, memorizing the silky feel of it before smiling. “Grace’s.”
Burning intellect scraped me. “Don’t kill her.”
I snorted. “I promised you I would go to her.”
He nodded.
“I need to do this. I won’t take long. And when I come back—”
“We’ll make wild monkey love?”
Choking with laughter, I dug my sharp teeth into my bottom lip. “You make trying to be an honest woman extremely difficult, Priest.”
“That’s the plan. Wear you down until you have mercy on me.”
Needing to touch him, I claimed his lips. It was a sweet, tender kiss full of the promise of me, of us. Of my ever-increasing desire for him. I also let him feel the truth—a truth I was nowhere near comfortable speaking into existence just yet.
“Hurry back.” His lips danced across mine.
I got up and walked to the closet, because if I stayed on that bed for one more second, all my good intentions would vanish like smoke.
Pushing aside the few hangers still holding Kemen’s clothes, I grabbed a pair of jeans and a cream-colored belly shirt with a Día de los Muertos graphic skull on front. Sitting up in bed, Asher leaned against the headboard with his arms behind his head, watching me with hot eyes.
My hands shook as I buttoned up my jeans. He smirked, licking his lips. His cock stood to glorious attention and I knew if I really wanted him, he’d deny no part of himself to me.
But Asher let me put this off, not because he couldn’t force me to give in to our need. He could, at any moment. That was probably the biggest turn-on. He would never demand it of me, he was an alpha male all the way through but confident enough in who he was that waiting wasn’t an issue.
Sweeping my fingers through my hair, I let it hang long and free today.
“Little demon...” His voice was thick and gravelly.
Applying a light sheen of nude lip-gloss, I twitched my brows for him to continue.
“I’ll be waiting for your return. You be safe and guard my greatest treasure.”
Slipping the tube of gloss into my pocket, I tried to pretend like what he’d just said hadn’t completely rattled me. “You’re going to follow me to Grace’s, aren’t you?”
His smile was smug. “I’ll stay here, like I promised last night. But you’ll be guarded. The Order wants you dead, and as much as I trust Grace, I don’t trust them. Be careful who sees you.”
“Who’s going to be guarding me?”
“An old friend.”
The air grew thick and oppressive, and then a gray shadow stepped forth. Eyes glowing like hellfire, the Gray Man stood silently by.
Kissing my fingers, I blew my priest a kiss and then went to lay some demons to rest.