Fallen Angel (Hqn) (15 page)

Her face was tightening up a little at a time, turning into a rigid mask. He’d never seen her like this and it scared the shit out of him. But he didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Things got harder,” she went on. “She started to take me outside at night, into the forest. The others came, then. I never saw their faces. They wore hoods. I only heard their chanting voices, and sometimes they would whisper to each other, but I rarely understood what they were saying. When I was little I thought they were ghosts in the dark. As I got older I would see their shoes when I was tied to the ground, and I understood they were real people.”

“Jesus,” he whispered. It slipped out, he couldn’t help it. But it was as though she hadn’t heard him.

“They staked me to the ground and spread rock salt around me in a circle. I was always naked. I don’t mind being naked, but sometimes it was cold. And the ground was hard, even with the dreaming herbs. And I remember when they tattooed my palms…”

She let go of his hand, held both of hers faceup, looking down at the red pentagrams there, then curled her fingers closed. It hurt him to see those marks in her skin, to think of what she’d been through. Too fucking awful. But he was going to sit there and listen as long as she needed to talk about it.

Her voice was fading, but she was still talking. “The Grandmother was always in charge. No one dared to speak against her, to argue with her. Everyone did her bidding. I came to understand that very early on. They worshipped her, I think, almost as much as they did the Dark God.”

He swallowed hard, trying to keep quiet, to let her speak no matter how awful it was.

“Sometimes they cut me…” Her voice was a whisper and he had to strain to hear her. “They used a hunting knife. It was different from The Grandmother’s ritual knife. Hers has a handle made from hazelwood. The others would make just small cuts to gather my blood. They marked me in my own blood. More pentagrams, other symbols. And then I would go to the dream place.” She took a quick breath, exhaled. “There is a place, another plane—I’ve told you a little about it before.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t like to think about what went on there. That whole demon thing. She hadn’t brought it up for a while. “As long as you understand it’s just a dream.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, seemed to come out of the daze she’d been in while talking, looked right at him. “I don’t want to tell more just now, Declan.”

“Sure. Whatever you want. I understand.”

“Do you?” She was watching him very closely, as if the answer were crucial.

“What do you mean?”

“A life is made up of both good and bad. Can you know someone if you don’t know both?”

He wasn’t sure he liked where this conversation was going. But it was true. He shrugged. “You’re right, I guess.”

“I want us to know each other.”

“So do I.” More than he liked to think about.

“Declan, I’ve told you some of my bad. Will you tell me about yours?” He started to shake his head, but she insisted. “Please tell me. Share that part of yourself with me. Please, Declan.”

How could he deny her? He didn’t want to talk about this stuff. But she was right. And some part of him was actually eager to get it out. To let her know him. And who else could he talk to about it? There was no one but Angel. There never had been.

“Okay. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the things I never talk to anyone about.”

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE
SUN
WAS
SINKING
BEYOND
the veil of trees, their branches making dark silhouettes against the sky. The mist was coming in, giving Angel tiny goose bumps over her arms and shoulders, but she didn’t want to go inside to get a sweater. Declan was ready to talk to her about his pain, and she didn’t want to risk doing anything that might undermine the shaky trust he had in her at this moment.

Declan rubbed a hand over his jaw, at the scar that ran along it, then ran his fingers through his hair. He wouldn’t look at her. But that was all right. The important thing was that he talk to her.

“I don’t know where to start. There’s my mom…and Abby. And my father.”

“Ruth always tells me to start at the beginning.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sat a few more moments, staring off into the trees, while all around them the forest grew darker, quieter. “So…my mother got sick. I was about twenty, away at college in San Francisco. I came home right away. Do you know about cancer, Angel?”

He looked at her, his eyes gleaming in the pale light coming through the windows from the one lamp she’d lit in the living room. They were a deep, midnight-blue. Full of banked emotion.

“Yes. One of The Grandmother’s dogs had cancer when he got old. I read about it. I wanted to help his pain, but it was hard—he hurt no matter what I did. I’m sorry, Declan.”

He turned away once more, and she thought perhaps it was easier for him to talk that way.

“Everything happened really fast.” He shook his head. “Actually, it took months. But I felt…shocked the whole time. Anyway…she had a round of chemotherapy, and it worked at first. Then it stopped working. She got sicker and sicker. They offered another treatment, more chemo, something new. They said it would give her more time.”

He stopped, and she watched the tight line of his shoulders, his mouth. She could hear his strained breath. She wanted to reach out, to touch him, soothe him. But she understood he wouldn’t want that right now. He was too involved in the old pain that still hurt him so much.

“So,” he continued after a long pause, “she decided she didn’t want it. I asked my dad to talk her into it. He refused. Said she could make her own decisions. But goddamn it, she was too sick.” His voice was a low growl, but she could hear the fury there as easily as if he were yelling. “He should have done it. He should have made the decision for her, taken it out of her hands.”

He went quiet and Angel let him sit for a few moments. “Declan, she may have simply been ready.”

His head whipped up at that, his stare hard on her face. “Ready to die?”

Oh, yes, he was angry. But she knew it wasn’t really directed at her.

“Yes. She may have had enough suffering. And chemotherapy is terribly hard on a person’s body, isn’t it? I read about it in the books.”

“It was fucking torture for her. Five months of it.”

“I know you wanted her to stay with you. But you can’t ask that she choose to suffer more in order to do that.”

“It would have extended her life. It wasn’t just for me,” he insisted.

“Wasn’t it?”

His eyes narrowed and she could feel the anger and the grief radiating from him like a wave of heat. Except that everything about him was icy cold. She shivered. But she wasn’t going to let this go. She knew she was right.

“I don’t mean to be cruel, Declan. But if she didn’t want to live any longer, and your father—her husband and life mate—accepted that decision, then it wasn’t up to anyone else to make. Not even her child. That’s the only way I can see it, and perhaps I’m wrong. But I think the earth was ready to receive her, Declan, and she was ready to go. This is part of the cycle. We must all accept. When we don’t, the pain and the fear and the grief build up until we drown in it.”

He rubbed his palms on his jeans, his mouth loosening a little. “Maybe.” He pulled in a deep breath, blew it out. “I don’t know. I’ve been so used to carrying this around with me. Being pissed off because it’s easier, maybe.”

“Is it really easier? After all these years, don’t you want to simply feel better?” Angel asked.

“Maybe part of me doesn’t want to feel better. There’s some sick security in hanging on to it. And I am fucking pissed at my dad. He should have done more. He should have at least had one conversation with her. How hard would that have been? I can’t let that go. That he wasn’t willing to let her have one more chance at getting better. That he wasn’t willing to give us one more chance at being a family.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s sick. I believe it’s human nature to stay with what is familiar. Safe. But I also believe we can aspire to more. If I didn’t truly believe that, I would never be anyone but that girl who was completely controlled by The Grandmother. I would never be able to survive being away from that control. And yet, here I am, learning to live a different life.”

“Maybe you’re braver than I am,” he muttered, half under his breath.

“Tell me about Abby, Declan.”

He started to shake his head, but he began to talk anyway, his gaze firmly fixed on the dark ground in front of him. She could see even in the dim light the vein pulsing in his temple, how tightly his jaw was clenched, and her heart hurt for him.

“God. That was…maybe even worse. About six months after my mom died I joined the military. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, I know.”

“I had to get away, you know? I had to
do
something. I couldn’t handle going back to San Francisco, back to school. I didn’t feel like I could just get back to my old life because it
wasn’t
my old life. Nothing felt the same. Like it would be too weird to pretend it was. So…they sent me to the Middle East. To Bahrain.”

He paused, rubbed at his scar. “It was my job to guard the family of a diplomat—an important American official. Abby was their daughter. She was sweet. Pretty. Forbidden. I fell for her the minute I saw her. We developed a relationship, of sorts. We’d talk sometimes, in the evenings. I was always careful not to overstep the boundaries with her. That was a part of my duty. It would have meant a discharge for me. The situation was impossible. I’d been thinking for weeks about a transfer. It would have been the smart thing to do. But I couldn’t do it. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough.”

Again, he stopped, and she let him just sit and breathe. He was quiet for so long she wasn’t sure he’d tell her more. But then he started talking again, both palms rubbing slowly over his denim-clad thighs.

“We were in the marketplace. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen pictures of these places in the Middle East. Even now it’s more like the bazaars a few hundred years ago, right there in the middle of a city. Tents and crowds and noise. I should have been more alert. But I was always so distracted by her…but that was no excuse. I had a job. Fuck.”

She reached out then, laying her hand on his arm. He flinched at first, but she held fast. “Declan, it’s okay. Just tell me.”

He turned to face her once more. His features were absolutely rigid, half his face caught in shadow. There was so much pain there. So much tension. She slipped her fingers down until she found his hand, was happy when he grasped hers, held on.

“They snuck up on us,” he said, his voice low and tight. “Thieves. Just common street thieves. I had a fucking gun, but they were so sly and fast. They managed to slit her throat before I could do anything. All for their fucking purses! Hers and her mother’s. Then they ran off, into the crowd. And Abby was bleeding and bleeding everywhere. Her mother was screaming. I didn’t know what to do, if I should go after them or stay with Abby. I wasn’t going to leave her. But there was nothing…there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do.”

His hand was so tight around hers it hurt, but she held on. “Declan, I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, but his gaze never left hers. He didn’t pull his hand away. “She bled to death in minutes. Fucking minutes.”

“Such a terrible loss,” she soothed. She reached up, stroked his hair, and he was staring at her as if he’d never been touched before. “Declan, you cannot blame yourself for this. There are terrible people in the world.”

“I let them get away. I let them hurt her.
I’m
the terrible person.”

“How can you say that? Do you really believe that about yourself?”

“I don’t know. I know that I failed her.”

“I have come to realize that each of us only has so much control over the universe,” she told him. “What happens to us here on this earth. Sometimes there are other forces that are more powerful than we are. Sometimes we really are helpless. And one of those things is death. The death of animals or people. Our own death. If we are supposed to survive, then we will. I believe I have some purpose on this earth, and that is why I lived. I don’t know what it is yet. But I’m here.”

His face softened a little. “I’m glad you’re here.”

His grip on her loosened, and he rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. The chemistry was still there, his touch lighting her body up with need. But the need was just as heavy and insistent in her chest. In her heart.

“Perhaps we are both here to help heal each other,” she told him. “You’ve helped me so much. I know that doesn’t make up for what you’ve lost. But I understand it. I understand because I’ve lost my whole life.”

“Jesus. I’m such an asshole. Feeling sorry for myself after what you’ve been through.”

“It has nothing to do with making comparisons. Your pain is your own. But, Declan, you cannot continue to blame yourself for what happened to Abby. And you can’t blame your father for what happened to your mother.”

He said, “I don’t blame him for her getting sick. I blame him for what he didn’t do for her. Maybe she would have died anyway. I know that. But the
chance…
”

She knew she was right about this. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this, but I think some of your anger at your father is nothing more than an old habit you haven’t let go of.”

“Pretty damn hard to let go of,” he muttered.

“Your father is a good man. And
you
are a good man, Declan. You’ve been so good to me.”

He didn’t say anything then, just stared at her, his gaze on hers. He kept rubbing her hand with his thumb, and after several moments he leaned in closer. She could feel the warmth of his body, could smell the scent of the woods that was
him.
Her body responded, desire shivering over her skin. She wanted to move closer. Wanted desperately for him to touch her. Everywhere.

“Declan,” she whispered, not knowing what it was she could ask for, even though she knew exactly what she wanted. Craved.

His mouth went loose, his eyes softened. She could see it even in the dark of the night. Could hear the rough intake and exhale of his breath. He came closer, his head ducking down until he was only inches from her. She licked her lips, watching him, her pulse a hot, thready skidding in her veins. Then he took in another breath, shook his head a little and pulled away, releasing her hand.

“Thanks for letting me talk, Angel.”

It felt as though a weight had been dropped into her stomach. Yet at the same time her body was humming with desire, her sex damp, her breasts aching. She didn’t know what to do. If she should dare to reach for him. If she should run inside, lock herself in her room and try to bring herself some relief. To dream of Asmodeus.

But it wasn’t Asmodeus she wanted. It was Declan.

She wanted to cry. For his pain. For her absolute and stunning
need
for him.

He stood suddenly. “I’m going in. I need to check my email. And I thought I’d do some reading tonight. Do you have something to keep you entertained?”

“Oh. Yes. I have a lot of books.”

“Okay. Good. Well…”

She got to her feet, and for once he didn’t offer his hand to help her. Instead, he turned and went into the house. She stayed on the porch for several moments, Liam standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her to decide what she was going to do.

If only she knew.

Declan had to accept her as a woman eventually. He still treated her sometimes as though she were a child. An invalid. And she was nearly healed. The scars on her shoulders remained, on her leg, her ribs. The smaller ones all over, from where she had been cut all her life. But inside she felt cleansed. Solid. Ready for her new life.

She wanted nothing more than for Declan to be a part of it. To be by her side, rather than holding her at a distance. She’d had such a lovely glimpse of that tonight. Not that what he’d told her had been lovely. But he’d trusted her. She’d felt connected to him.

She wanted that. Wanted him. And the wanting felt like some emptiness inside her she knew no way to fill.

Sighing, she motioned to Liam, opened the screen door and went inside to spend the evening in her room with her books. And the insistent need that beat in her veins like another heart.

She passed him in the living room, his back turned to her as he sat at his computer. The cotton of his white T-shirt pulled taut across the muscles of his strong back. She wanted to touch him, to stroke the dark hair curling at the back of his neck. Her fingers twitched, and she pulled them into tight fists at her sides.

She would have to
make
him see her. Make him see her as a woman. She couldn’t go on like this much longer.

* * *

H
E
KNEW
HE
WAS
DREAMING
. Understood that the silky little hands on his chest weren’t really there. A figment of his lust-addled imagination, fueled by desire he hadn’t allowed himself to meet. If he didn’t open his eyes it would be okay. As long as he was dreaming, he could let himself feel her hands on his body. That gentle stroking that was driving him crazy. Making him rock-hard already.

Her fingertips were making long, slow circles around his nipples, then brushing over them, making them harden. Almost as hard as the flesh rising between his thighs.

Was she whispering his name, her voice sweet and soft? Her voice drove him crazy, made him want her even more. Just her voice…