Tall, Dark, and Deadly: Seven Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance

  Her eyes widened.

  “I don’t need company. But, I do want yours. If you don’t mind.”

  “I’m glad that you want me with you.”

  Tension eased from his shoulders. “Good.” He con-centrated on her emotions, letting his mind open to them. “We’ll go another day, though. I need to get back to training in a couple hours.”

  Disappointment radiated off her, as well as bitter accept-ance.

  “I won’t let training keep me from seeing you, Lex.”

  Her smile at odds with her emotions, she shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you drama.”

  “I’d rather have drama and honesty than no drama and you keeping things from me.”

  She glowered and folded her arms. “My thoughts are my own, Jett.”

  “I can’t read your thoughts. Just your emotions.”

  “Already?”

  “I need to concentrate, but, yes.”

  She set her empty plate on a table and curled up on her side, her head in his lap. “Honestly? I want to keep you here, all to myself. But I’d never want you to change, either.”

  “And that’s exactly why I think this will work.” He hoped it would work, but a nagging knot in his gut reminded him that nothing beyond their growing connection and friendship was stacked in their favor.

  …

  “It’s the job of the other Guardians to detect intruders crossing onto Sanctuary’s land. Keeping the colony safe is not our job. We are the last line of defense for the archangels.”

  Jett followed Lark through the woods in a circle around the archangel house. Lark alternated between lecturing and lapsing into silence, turning his full attention to his surroundings, always alert. After five total weeks of training, Jett grew more accustomed to the same behavior with each passing day. He listened to his partner’s words but always focused first and foremost on any potential threat from the sounds, scents, and shadows of the forest.

  “Sanctuary has thousands of acres of land and miles of border, outside of which is nothing but tens of thousands of acres of Vermont state forest. Monitoring every foot of the colony’s border at any given moment is impossible, even with the security cameras we’ve acquired. It’s imperative that I, soon you and I, keep a secure perimeter in close proximity to the family. While I prefer to find and fight any threat out here, I—we—need to be close enough to be at the archangels’ sides at a moment’s notice.”

  They completed the trip around the house and came out of the woods at the lakeshore, the stone house towering to their left. Raphael flew overhead, high enough to be a white smudge against the dark blue, early evening sky.

  “Our proximity to the house is a moot point when they’re up there,” Jett said. At least no human would be able to shoot a target that high.

  “They can’t be one hundred percent safe all the time, as aggravating as that is. It’s important to remember that the archangels aren’t helpless, other than the infants, and don’t appreciate being treated as such. I’ve never seen Raphael act like a victim, and I expect no different from Wren from what I’ve seen. When Kora and young Wren were in danger, Raphael took matters into his own hands with a pair of combat knives. He’s not bad at hand-to-hand fighting. I taught him myself. Wren and Ginger have the ability to kill with just skin contact and they’ve both used that psychic talent without hesitation. That said, they aren’t battle-hardened warriors, and wings make for large, clumsy targets on the ground. We’re here to keep them out of fights they cannot hope to win.”

  Lark climbed the gnarled, massive oak tree that dominated the property, its crown wider and taller than the house. Jett followed, and they crouched on thick branches halfway up the tree’s height.

  “I often watch from here at night,” Lark said. “It’s the best view from any one spot, and the acoustics are just right to hear anyone approach from any direction. Ideally, though, we should split up and take opposite ends of the property. At night—when the archangels are all inside, sleeping—is a good time for you to exercise that free will you’re always bellyaching about, and do other things. Scrapbooking, perhaps?”

  “Fuck off.” Jett grinned and turned his attention to the house. Illumination spilled out from the fourth-floor windows—Wren and Ginger’s rooms. Raphael landed on the third-floor flight deck and went inside. More lights came on.

  “That’s the second time he’s gone for a lengthy flight today. He does that when he’s stressed.”

  Jett focused on that inner place in his mind that never seemed to be his own. There, he found emotions that weren’t his, like voices from dreams. Indeed, some days finding them was like trying to remember the details of a dream, but now that he understood the ability, every day showed improvement.

  Yes, Raphael had something on his mind. But the sensation of intense worry gave no clue as to the cause. “Should we go inside and talk to him?”

  Lark shook his head, but frowned deeply. “Not everything that goes on in that house concerns us. If it’s relevant to their safety, he’ll confide in us.”

  “But—”

  “I know it’s frustrating, but this level of security would make them miserable if we didn’t respect their privacy as much as possible.” The frown lifted in a slow grin. “Kora threw a shoe at me once.”

  Jett chuckled. “I’m sure you deserved it.”

  “Certainly not!” A pause. “Maybe a little bit. Raphael, the bastard, thought it was pretty damned funny. The second shoe went in his direction. Justice.”

  Movement drew Jett’s gaze to the single door on the ground level of the house. Lexine stepped outside, spoke for a moment with Ginger, who stood smiling in the doorway, then headed down the path.

  “Tell me the honest truth.”

  Lark cocked his head.

  “With a job like this, would I be able to carve out enough time to devote to her?”

  Lark didn’t answer for a minute. “We could work something out. It wouldn’t be perfect or consistent, but if she’s the right girl, she’d be understanding. It’s a lot of ask of a female.”

  “Yeah. Was it too much to ask of yours?”

  With a low curse, Lark shifted out of his crouch on the branch and sat on his butt, letting his legs dangle. “You’re not going to let that drop.”

  “Nope. I need to decide how to handle this, and I can tell you have experience. A bad one, I’m guessing.”

  “Point taken. It is a lesson I need to teach you.” Lark pulled a dagger from a sheath on his ankle, the hilt more ornate than his typical weapons. An engraving on the blade read Never Fail. “Her name was Caza, and we courted a century ago, not long after Raphael and I moved here at Dante’s invitation. Caza was a dependent sort of female. Timid. Frail. She had many strengths, but independence was not one of them.”

  “So, she had a hell of a time with you constantly working.”

  “She handled that well, actually. At the time, I split some hours with Dante so I could spend time with her each day. At that point, Raphael lived in an apartment on the second floor of the town hall. The arrangement was easy to manage, and Raphael encouraged me when I would have hesitated. He worried about me not having anything else in my life.”

  Lark dropped his head back and stared at the sky, now covered with stars. The cords of his neck grew taut. “About a year in, a group of humans attacked the colony. They weren’t poachers, just religious extremists hoping to rid the earth of a few demons. ‘God’s work,’ blah-blah. It was late fall. No leaves on the trees. Raphael flew over—low, because a storm was coming in—as they were sneaking through the woods, and they shot at him. They missed him, but he had to dodge. He side swept a tall tree fast enough to break the outermost flight feathers of one wing. The imbalance forced him to land.

  “I was elsewhere in the woods on a picnic with Caza when I sensed his distress. I told her to get inside and I rushed into the forest to get to Raphael. Three humans had him cornered. I dispatched them.” Lark dropped his gaze from
the stars and looked Jett in the eye. “The rest of the human group had proceeded to the colony. They didn’t get two steps into the residential area before the Guardians took them all down. However, the humans had happened upon Caza, who’d been too scared to move from the spot where I’d left her, and…”

  Jett swallowed. “They killed her?”

  “Yes.”

  As Lark lapsed into silence, Jett stared hard at the ground. He nodded in grim understanding. “Even if you’d known she wouldn’t go…”

  “I would’ve had to leave her. Hell, at the time, I suspected she wouldn’t go. I saw the fear in her eyes and felt it in my mind. But, I didn’t take the oath to Raphael with reservations or conditions. He comes first. Period. If you go through with this, you’ll take the same oath.”

  “She knew that, though.”

  “Yes. We’d discussed it at length. But I got to tell you, the oath doesn’t justify her death here.” He pressed his palm to his chest. “I still feel the sting of her emotions during her final moments. Think about it long and hard, Jett. No matter the circumstances, you’ll have to turn your back on Lexine if the archangels are in even a small amount of danger. If I could go back, I never would have dated Caza in the first place.”

  At a loss, Jett simply said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Think about it. Remember that it’s a very different situation for the other Guardians. They take mates on a regular basis. We don’t. If you want to become a regular Guardian, neither Raphael nor I will begrudge you. I’ll train you either way.”

  Lark got to his feet, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Keep watch. I’m going to check the perimeter again.”

  …

  When Lark didn’t return right away, Jett climbed down from the oak tree and began to walk around the house, first across the lawns, then farther out in the woods.

  Where had the demon gone? Everywhere Jett went, he detected Lark’s scent, a result of his constant presence. Jett returned to the house and stepped into the garden. Light spilled from the half-open door of Lark’s little home in the back corner.

  Jett left him alone, certain that Guardian didn’t break down easily or often. If he needed a couple minutes to himself, he wouldn’t take them unless he trusted Jett.

  Returning to the tree, he focused his senses on his surroundings, but his thoughts went to Lexine. Any hope that he could have both Lexine and the position of a dedicated Guardian had been erased. He’d have to choose.

  The idea of giving up either grated on his skin.

  Sure, there’d be nothing shameful about becoming an average Guardian for the colony. Raphael could find someone else. But, the archangel had asked Jett. That trust meant too much to turn away from. Besides, the empath in Jett wouldn’t be able to tolerate such a thing. He hadn’t been able to walk away during the long, harsh winter. He certainly wasn’t leaving now, in any form.

  But Lexine…

  He could feel her warm skin, her breath on his neck, and the contentment of sitting across from her over a plate of food. Such simple things, but nevertheless, he’d been changed by them. The sense of companionship and closeness was unlike anything he’d ever known. On a deep level, he knew that not every female could touch him so.

  Lark said Jett didn’t need to jump to a decision. Months of training remained before he had to decide to take the oath or not.

  That left time to get to know Lexine better, make sure he wasn’t misreading what was growing between them.

  With this much on the line, he had to be damned certain. And so did she.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Staring at herself in the new bathroom mirror, Lexine said, “You know he’s not going to have time for you. Why are you getting attached?”

  After dressing and braiding her hair, she headed for the graveyard. With autumn making itself at home, it was time to cut back the spent flowerbeds. She needed to stay busy, not think about Jett, not sit around and consider how much their intimate encounter two weeks ago had affected her. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.

  She worked well into the afternoon, doing more than was needed, even digging a new flowerbed near the gate to plant in the spring.

  Distraction? Who had she been kidding? Jett’s hands might as well have never left her body. She kept reliving the kisses. The touches.

  “Hello, beauty.” His tone when he’d greeted her, returning with food, had turned those two simple, unoriginal words into her complete undoing.

  She’d been on the edge as it was. Though the act had been simple, a virgin had made love to her with more intensity and focus than any of her previous partners. At the time, with those demons, she’d had no cause to complain. Compared to Jett, it was as if those demons hadn’t even been looking at her while they’d been dating her.

  Her phone chirped, her ringtone set to singing birds, and a welcome name graced the screen. “Hey there.”

  “Hey. Feel like being bad?” Fatigue dulled Ginger’s voice.

  “Define, ‘bad.’”

  “Painting our nails in the garden while I let my mate fend for himself with twins for a couple hours?”

  Lexine laughed. Nail painting? She was no tomboy, but she hadn’t painted her nails in a decade. “Sure.”

  After stopping to rinse off the dirt and change into simple cotton pants and a tank top, Lexine wandered into the garden behind the archangel house. Ginger sat on the patio adjacent to the building, staring into the goldfish pond.

  “Needed a break?” Lexine settled at her friend’s side. “Everything’s okay, right?”

  “Oh, everything’s fine.” Ginger smiled. “The twins are out cold, I wanted some sun, and I haven’t seen you much lately. Besides, this might be the last truly warm day of summer. It’s supposed to pour for the next week.”

  Lexine perused shades of nail polish in a small basket as they chatted.

  “I took these pictures earlier.” Ginger handed over her cell phone.

  Baby pictures never got old, and Lexine flipped through the latest with one hand while absently mixing the polish with the other. In one, the twins slept in the double bassinet at the foot of the bed, and Wren lay facedown on the mattress with mussed hair and closed eyes, his wing fanned out, partially hiding the infants. In another picture, a close-up of the twins, they lay on their father’s outstretched wing.

  “Nothing gets them to sleep faster,” Ginger said. “Makes me insanely jealous.” She took the phone back, a slow smile forming. “So, how are things going with Jett?”

  Lexine paused and gazed at their surroundings. “Is he here?”

  “Somewhere. He’s training with Lark, as far as I know. They don’t go far.”

  “Any chance of eavesdropping?”

  “No. I wouldn’t be able to stand being watched over so closely if we didn’t have our privacy.” She winked. “Just don’t raise your voice too loud.”

  “Things are…great. I like him. But, I don’t see him all that much. Naturally.”

  “Mmm.”

  “No man is perfect, but I don’t see how this is going to work.”

  “Do you want it to work?”

  Lexine stared at the little bottle of red polish as if it held all the answers. “More so every time I see him.”

  Ginger spread pink polish on her toenails, grinning. “Wonderful!”

  “Has Lark ever dated?”

  “There was someone, a century ago. I don’t know any details, though.”

  “Didn’t work out, obviously.”

  “This doom-and-gloom mood isn’t like you.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that Jett’s job is going to be his life, and I’m trying to keep myself from falling for him too hard. It’ll hurt less later.”

  “Good luck with that. You can’t will yourself to or not to fall for someone. But, you’re right. You’re not walking into domesticville.”

  “Do you think it’s even possible that the two of us…?”

  “Always.” Ginger capped th
e nail polish and held her gaze with a grin.

  Lexine blew out a heavy sigh.

  “Maybe things will be different with the two of them as partners.” Ginger leaned back on her elbows. “Maybe they’ll trade off and each get more time for themselves.”

  “Just how much time does Lark take for himself now?”

  “Pretty much zip. He sleeps, he eats, bathes and exercises, all as efficiently as possible. The only time I’ve seen him do anything else besides stand guard is when he comes into the house. Raphael invites him in frequently. Trouble, the two of them. They almost burned the house down a month ago trying to fry fish.”

  Lexine laughed. “I can’t imagine that.”

  “Lark is stoic in public, and not just because he has to be constantly on alert. If he wasn’t what he is, I think he’d be shy. Watching him and Raphael pass an evening together, it’s easy to see that they’re friends, and that theirs is a friendship hard-won over decades. Devin says he can’t get Lark to so much as crack a smile.”

  “But, there was a girl, once?”

  “Yes. I only know that much because, trying to break through his shell myself, I asked him these sorts of questions. But, the expression on his face… I’ve only seen it once before, when he woke up for the first time after being returned to his own body last year and explained Kora’s death. Whatever happened, it still causes him pain to this day. I let the subject drop.”

  A shadow passed over them. Raphael flew in and landed on the flight deck overhead. Though she’d seen the archangels out around the colony every day since their return nearly a year ago, she still watched, fascinated, as Raphael stretched that twenty-foot expanse of pure white and folded his wings back.

  Ginger called out.

  Raphael glanced down. He stepped off the edge and swept his wings out, parachuting to the patio with only a couple of circular wing beats to slow his descent. He landed as if he weighed nothing at all.

  Lexine clasped her hands between her knees. Though she’d known the archangel when she was a little girl, she’d only come face-to-face with Raphael a couple times since he’d returned from imprisonment. Hundreds of years old and possessing the silver eyes of one of the original fallen, he never failed to leave her at loss for words. Wren, Ginger, herself… they were all earthborn, their lives an open book. But, Raphael…just what sort of creature was he, really? What life had he led before he came to earth?