"Are any of them alive now? Your mother? Her mother?"
"No." When she couldn't bring herself to say anything further, even at his questioning look, he bent and placed his lips on her neck, just below her ear. His nose brushed the outer curve, breath tickling the flesh there. At the wet heat of his mouth, her head tilted back, her nerves shimmering deliciously. "Ah, Goddess. You're evil."
His lips pulled in a smile against her, but it couldn't dislodge the heaviness in her chest, even under that sensation of response. "Tell me."
She'd just say it, and be done with it. He wanted to know, she'd tell him and they'd go on. Still, the words clogged in her throat. "We all die before we turn twenty-one, my lord."
Jonah stopped, lifted his head, all amusement fading out of his expression. Her gaze shifted to the ocean outside the window. "How old are you, little one?"
She gave a half chuckle, and knew it was a bleak sound. "A fine time to decide I'm too young for you, my lord."
She wasn't surprised when he gripped her shoulders, lifted her to a sitting position. Her fingers had to curl into his thighs, though, to give her the courage to look into his face. "How old, Anna?" he repeated.
"I just turned twenty. So if I'm going to carry on the legend, I guess I better get pregnant soon."
"Don't." He made it a command. "What happened to your mother?"
When she shook her head, he eased her back to the bed and moved over her body, his knee pressing between hers. She opened to him. His eyes somehow got darker as Anna found herself submitting to his will so desperately, so easily. She could deny him nothing, even the words that had gotten trapped in her throat. He came down upon her, his chest pressed against her bare flesh, the denim and the length of him trapped beneath it rubbing against her aroused flesh. Anna drew in a breath, arched against him. Taking her wrists, he stretched both their arms out far to either side. With his arms being longer, he was able to lift his upper body to bend and kiss her sternum, just a brush of lips.
He made her feel vulnerable, holding her this way, and yet it made her want to strip her soul bare for him. She didn't understand why putting her in this open pose unlocked something inside her that a more protective posture would have kept closed, but it did, and she finally found her voice, a tremulous whisper in the darkness, feathering against the hair on his brow.
"She cut her throat right after I was born, with the knife that severed the cord between us. She asked my forgiveness, Mina told me." Anna stared blankly at that fall of hair over his forehead. "My mother said she couldn't bear to see her daughter suffer, but she didn't have the courage to end my life with hers."
"Holy Mother." When Jonah rested his brow on hers, Anna closed her eyes, feeling the heat of him, his strong features. His body pressed down on her further and she couldn't help herself. She raised her legs, coiled them around his thighs, her toes sliding down the inseam above his knees. "My lord . . ." Please, take away the thoughts. I am going to keep talking until I shatter into pieces.
But he didn't move, and she found herself speaking aloud again, the words pouring out of the locked memory chest that weighted her heart. "You asked about Mina. When that happened, Mina was young, no more than a child. While they were distracted, she . . . They said she captured my mother's blood, and made me swallow it, along with some of her own. Because it made me violently ill, Neptune had her thrown into the Abyss, weighted with chains. But then they discovered I lacked the type of destructive powers the other daughters had had. The midwife and healer who attended me said Mina had somehow discovered that being nursed on my mother's blood and that of the seawitch's line would give me some kind of protection. So Neptune had her fished out of the Abyss." She swallowed. "No one expected her to be alive. I was told her body was badly maimed by scavengers. I didn't see her again until I was older and sought her out, made her tolerate my company."
A faint smile touched her lips and now she was able to bring her gaze back to his penetrating one. "So you see, my lord, Mina risked her life to give me the life I have. I know she struggles with her darkness. But even if she doesn't think of it that way, she needs me to believe in her goodness. Because I'm the only one who does."
He remained silent, studying her as if she was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. After a few moments under that intent gaze, she couldn't bear it anymore. She began to strain against his hold. He stayed motionless, and that increased the need within her, released some of the pain and replaced it with the hard, needy anticipation of arousal. Something in his face told her he was waiting . . . wanting . . . She lifted her hips against the pressure of his, strained further, arched her throat, pressing her breasts against his chest. Offering. Begging with her movements.
His wings were at that half fold still, but they sheltered her from the remaining day's light, shading her, taking her into twilight as he bent at last, seizing her behind her nape and bringing her up against his mouth. No tenderness, startling in the way his mouth clashed with hers. But she just opened as far as she could for him, let him plunder, making urgent whimpers in the back of her throat. Her legs clamped over his hips, the muscular curves of buttocks. Her aggressive movement earned a warning growl. Her answer was to arch further, make small motions against his hard length, daring him to restrain her movements further.
He reached between them, figured out the workings of the pants, stood with sudden impatience to strip them off, then came back down upon her before she had more than a moment to miss his heat, the weight and hardness of him.
But she needed him to fill her, to be inside of her. Her heart and soul were suffocating; couldn't he see it?
"Jonah . . . my lord. Please don't let me feel this way."
His gaze flickered up to her. "Do you need the pain, little one?"
She nodded. "Make me not remember, my lord." Make me forget I belong nowhere, not to the mermaids or to the humans, not to anyone.
She knew those like Mina might scoff at the debasing idea of belonging to another. But when a soul was starved for touch, for connection, it would willingly enslave itself to the offering of love from another, even if only for a few moments. She would be his, as long as he would have her, and she would nourish herself on that brief time if she could. How many of us have had the opportunity to be with an angel, after all?
She'd been strong and independent the whole of her short life. There'd been no real choice in that, but she'd been bolstered by the example of Mina, by the wasted life of her mother. She'd never realized the danger of being held in the arms of a strong male who wanted to protect, to care. It was far more dangerous to her than anything else about Jonah. But like most things in her life, she made the conscious choice to embrace it as long as it was offered. She had too little time to waste it being afraid.
Rearing up against his touch, she bit him just above the circle of his nipple, tightening her legs on him. In response, he slid an arm around her waist and sheathed himself in her, hard, deep and fast, making her suck in a breath, utter a sharp cry of pleasure.
He pushed her back down and began to stroke inside her, his eyes fierce, almost like the glinting red of a Dark One in the darkness of her cottage. "I will make you scream, little one."
Jonah knew he'd kept her talking about the painful memories past the time he should have. She'd inherited a legacy of unfulfilled hopes, and he was likely to be yet another one of them. He hadn't even thanked her for saving his life. But he couldn't bring himself to do so until he knew that it had been worth saving or that it didn't bring more sorrow to her. However, he had not been alive as long as he had without learning to be resourceful, and there were things he could give her now other than his gratitude.
The flowers with which she surrounded herself were part of the key to her. Delicate, temporal, living with fierce, perfect and altogether fragile beauty in the moment. So he would give her that moment.
Sliding from her body despite her mewl of protest and his own aching hardness, he picked up one of the dandelions f
rom the vase on the side table. Trailing it over her stomach, he watched some of the seeds dislodge, tickle her further. Then he bent, kissed the underside of her breast where the crease of its weight rested it over her rib cage. Lingered, tasted as she moved restlessly beneath him, tangled her fingers in his hair.
Lifting up, he stopped her so he could return the favor, combing out her hair with his fingers, loosening the tie that held it so he could spread it over the bed. It surprised her, he could tell, when he threaded her hands through it, tangling them, tying the strands over her wrists to keep her like that, open and trembling. Then he lifted one of her legs, supporting the calf in his hand, and guided it under his arm, resting her heel on his hip as he dragged the dandelion down, down . . .
Anna bit her lip at the feathery contact, and then a guttural cry came from her lips as he bent and replaced its touch with his own mouth.
"What are--"
"Taking you as high as you can go, little one."
When he put his mouth fully over her hot, slick flesh, all the painful memories fled back into the darkness. Anna tugged on the quilt, working her hips against his face. His urging, rhythmic squeezes made her feel like she could bear no more, though she also wanted to ride his mouth forever. She rocked, cried out. When she looked up the slope of her body, his lashes fanned his cheeks as he watched the aroused state of her soaked sex with avid intent. It made her writhe even more insistently.
For his part, Jonah's noble intentions had fled and now he simply needed to take. As she lay so open below him, he was reminded of how she'd offered him everything on that first night, and he realized in himself the trait of a conqueror, taking as his due that which he might not deserve.
Whatever he gave her could not measure up to what her full submission gave to him. That thought gave him pause, and he studied it briefly from several angles before he pushed it away, lifted both her legs to his shoulders. Feeling her calves slide past the arches of his wings, he raised her light form, holding her for the deeper penetration of his mouth.
He'd forgotten the sweet, musky taste of a woman's cleft, the slick honey of it, the way she would respond to it if done well, as if she were being tossed on a stormy sea, her body moving as sinuously as the frothy waves.
One of the human legends of Ariel's demise had been her turning to seafoam, the supposed natural death for a mermaid, where the soul forever became a part of the sea. Now, as Anna undulated as she might if she were moving through the water, Jonah knew her heart was in the ocean, her soul deep in the sea. But it was a world that often didn't want her there. So she lived here, caught on the boundary of land and water, symbolic, like everything in this cottage. For all its quiet tranquility, he found he didn't like her being here, where all its traditions might make her believe this was the best she could hope for.
Except for that one picture. The one that said she hoped for something better.
As he came back up her body and sheathed himself again, pushing them both over the edge they needed, he knew he was going to embark on this journey with her. Not because he believed the seawitch, or that the darkness in his heart needed healing, but because suddenly the most important thing was that his little mermaid knew that someone believed in her.
And hellfire, he still couldn't bring himself to go back, reach out to Lucifer or the Lady. Or any of them. What would a week matter? Time was relative, when one was an angel.
SHE woke alone. The thunder was shaking the house, coming close together, flashes of lightning illuminating the cottage so she could see him standing on the deck, the sliding glass door open to the driving rain. His hair was plastered to his head, his face tilted to the sky, the wings a heavy weight on his back.
She didn't dress, but moved down the stairs, stood in the open door, stepped out behind him.
"Is it a battle?"
He shook his head, put his hand back without looking at her. When she took it, he drew her forward, tucking her under his wing so she could stand before him. He spoke in a quiet murmer despite the rain because his jaw was along her temple as they looked up together. "It's just a thunderstorm, little one."
She could feel it from him, a thrumming tension. Anna turned, tilted her face to him instead of to the sky.
Every line of his face was taut, his eyes . . . haunted. Something moved there, something that reminded her of what Mina had said. He leads the angels that fight Dark Ones . . .
"Tell me of the other angels." She sought for something to draw him out, not wanting him to dwell alone in the darkness of his thoughts. "Your friends. Those you command."
A quiver ran through his muscles. "I can't." Bowing his head, he brushed her temple and closed his eyes, even as her arms came up around his neck. "When I think of them, I only hear their screams. See the blood."
It took her a moment to digest the meaning behind his words, and realize where his thoughts were. Not with the living he'd left behind to be here tonight, but with the dead who'd left him.
"Choose one." Guided by intuition, she whispered it, as it might come to him in a dream, where it was safe to remember. "Something simple. Tell me the color of his hair."
He opened his eyes and stared at her, so intently he jumped when the lightning flashed again. His fists clenched, but she put her hands over his arms to remind him she was there when the snarl of the thunder came, as it always did.
"Ronin had bright gold hair," he said in the thunder's aftermath, the rush of the rain closing them into a still space where she was conscious of his breath on her cheek, the mist on his lashes that might not be from the water dripping from his brow. He shook his head, his lids squeezing shut again, then reopening. "He was inordinantly proud of it."
"Gold. Was he handsome?"
"He seemed to think so. When he sought a female to ground himself, he'd boast that she just had to see his hair to fall into his arms." He gave her a light squeeze, seeming to recall himself. "Unlike my darkness, which I have to compensate for with my charm."
"I am glad to tell you your darkness is most handsome, my lord." She threaded her fingers through the wet raven strands. "And it's a good thing, for your charm is rough around the edges."
"You wound me, little one."
She smiled as more of the tension eased from his shoulders. "Are the others all like you? Handsome and intolerably arrogant?"
Something glimmered in those ebony eyes. "No, they are worse. And ugly. You would not like them at all."
His upper body was beaded with the falling rain. Impulsively, she placed her lips on a drop high on his chest, rising to her toes, and she tasted it, his skin with the rainwater. The absence of salt in the water, the taste of salt from the skin. The way the ocean and the earth came together, sharing the salt. The same way the two of them came together, an angel and a mermaid.
His hand came up, cupped the back of her head. He held her like that, the rest of his body so still, restrained power. She didn't even think he was breathing as she let her own hands glide like birds down the slope of his back, that shallow indentation, over convex sets of muscles to the rise of his buttocks. She rested there, feeling the smaller feathers on the undersides of his wings touch her.
"I miss them. So fiercely I want to hurt someone when I think of them." Jonah felt it within him, the violence simmering, and hated that it rose up in him now, when he held a creature in his arms who was the antithesis of it all. He pressed his forehead to hers, wishing he could just absorb her calmness, the tranquility he felt in her young soul.
Earlier, he'd taken her body with passion and strength. She'd bitten him, clawed, responded in kind. But this, this bare brush of contact was somehow even more powerful, standing out here in the rain, just the two of them.
Had the battlefield, painted in blood, become his true home? Had his enemies, as much as those fighting with him, become his family, if only for those moments of utter violence, when there was room for nothing else? The thought was abhorrent, but here, where he finally, after so many years, felt a
quiet connection, it reminded him of how disconnected he'd felt for so long. Purposeless, except when he was killing.
"Goddess, I've told no one I missed them. What magic is in your arms, little one? Your touch? You shouldn't be anywhere near me."
"I can sing you to sleep, my lord." She seemed unconcerned by that warning. Instead, she looked out toward the sea and Jonah knew, whether or not the house was protected by the power of Neptune, she was worried about the Dark Ones finding him as they exposed themselves to the forces of the storm.
"Will I sleep for days?" He could think of nothing else to say when she looked up at him with her large violet eyes.
"No." Her small pink mouth curved. "The destructive power of my ancestor is different in me. But I can weave dreams. As I sing you to sleep, I can bring you whatever you wish, in your dreams. If you tell me of their faces, their voices, I can give them back to you. Ronin, all of them. For a night."
His thumb moved across the full bottom lip, collecting rainwater. "And do you ever sing yourself to sleep, little one? Give yourself someone in your dreams?"
She shook her head. "No, but the Lady had pity on me. She brought me an angel instead."
He stared at her. She'd revealed herself to him earlier. Maybe that was the key that had unlocked his trust, his willingness to give to her parts of himself he'd given to no one else. She was innocent and far removed from what he was supposed to be to others, but she did understand what evil was.
"I'll go with you, Anna. We'll go see the shaman. Perhaps there will be answers on this journey for both of us."
Anna swallowed, disbelieving for a moment that he'd agreed. But when she leaned into him and saw desire rising in his eyes, her pleased surprise was replaced by a different anticipation. She knew he would have her again this night.
"I am glad to hear it, my lord. But at least for this evening, I think all the answers we need are here."