“We were promised protection for Sparta . . . salvation for Greece and our families,” he explained numbly. “In exchange, we were required but one sacrifice. To protect mankind throughout eternity, to battle every form of darkness that would seek their destruction. And that’s what I’m still doing, today. Here. Now.”
She shivered. “That’s what brought you into a partnership with the Angels.” She searched his face, clearly trying to understand. “They fight demons and so do you?”
“Yes.”
She glanced away. “Do you believe there are ever good demons? In-between creatures of some sort?”
He captured her chin in his hand, forcing her to look back at him. “What do you mean?”
She leaned her cheek against his chest. “I saw so many things during my years of wandering,” she admitted, her voice filled with grief. “I . . . did not always understand the other world.
I
was in an in-between place.”
“You were not a demon, sweetheart. You were born a human, with a spirit, with goodness in you. You believed in God and followed his commandments. You did not become a demon when you died.”
“You said I killed myself,” she answered in a small voice. “That is a great sin. Against God, against myself . . . and against all those who loved me.”
He held her closer, aching for the torment he heard in her words. “But it did not make you evil.”
“It made me . . . lost. Very, very lost.”
They were silent for a long moment, with only the quiet sounds of their breathing, of the elevator door opening outside their room. Laughter and then a child’s happy cries. Followed by silence again.
“Why did you do it?” he asked, and braced himself, wishing he’d been able to hold back his curiosity, his desperation to know why she’d abandoned him.
She clung to him, trembling. “Aristos, I was not lying when I said I do not remember. I . . . I would do anything to know, to understand what brought about my fate.”
He stroked her hair, thinking, and then a perfect plan began to form in his mind.
“Trust me, okay?” Ari asked, leading her toward the bed.
“I always trusted you. That has not changed.” She watched as he moved to the large windows, pulling back the drapes. A balcony was attached to their suite, and he opened the French doors that led to it. Dread speared her, hard. “What . . . what do you intend?” she asked, although she feared she already knew his intentions.
He turned to face her. “I want you to undress. I won’t watch. Strip down to your undergarments, then climb into the bed.”
Although he commanded her with authority, intent on his plan, his face flushed when she reached and began unfastening her bodice. “You may watch,” she said, looking down shyly. “In fact, I wish for you to.”
“Can’t . . . not a good idea,” he said, then added, “Yet. We have to re-create that night’s events just like they happened. It’s the only way your memories might come back. We weren’t lovers when I came to you then.”
He moved to the dresser and turned off the lamp, and the room was instantly much darker. Although the rains had stopped, the day remained heavily overcast and gloomy.
“It’s daytime,” she reminded him. “Perhaps we should wait until midnight.”
She unfastened another button, daring to glance at him. He’d already walked toward the balcony and braced a large hand on the open door. “No, I’m not that strong. I’ve never been the disciplined one in our ranks.” He laughed. “And my will for resisting you, Jules? Pretty much nonexistent.”
“You came with your wings unfurled,” she murmured. “You stood outside my room, in the darkness.”
“I can conceal myself from the mortal realm,” he explained, and with a movement of his hands, he gave a nod. “Only you can see me now.”
“Why do you have wings? Were you made . . . an angel? When you were given immortality?”
He sighed, staring out at the city. “I was reborn in the River Styx. Ares, god of war, did the deed himself. He made us hawk protectors, as he felt that suited our warrior nature. Lethality, grace, power . . .” He stopped talking, his back still to her, then continued somberly, “Ares said the raptor’s nature, melded with our Spartan, human one, would make us the greatest warriors ever born.” Raking a hand through his hair, he added, “Some consider our changed forms beautiful.”
“I did. . . . I do. And I know that I still shall.” She pulled her unfastened dress off and, for a moment, stared down at her corseted body, noticing how it vibrated with every pounding beat of her heart. “You’ll touch me this time, won’t you? You won’t turn away . . . like before.”
He said nothing but pulled his own shirt off, standing resolutely in that doorway. She noticed a few light scars upon his back, ones she’d not seen last night and, without even meaning to, reached a hand in his direction. He was at least five feet away from her, but she moved her fingertips in the air, outlining the marks. Frowning at the knowledge that he’d been injured and suffered . . . and that he’d died in battle. “I need you,” she murmured, voice growing insistent. “I want you badly, Ari.”
Still he said nothing, and she could see that he was breathing very heavily, one large hand braced against the door again. His grip tightened until his knuckles whitened. What was he warring against?
“Ari, are you all right? Are you . . . in turmoil again, like earlier in the square?”
Slowly he shook his head, sighing, but maintained his silence. She began to panic, fumbling with the fastenings of her corset. “Please don’t leave me in silence.”
With an agonized sound, he whispered, “You worry that
I’ll
turn away?”
Only then did she understand. She started toward him, but he extended a hand. “I shouldn’t see you, can’t touch you. Not until we’ve re-created that night’s events.” Then more softly, he added, “Not until I know that you won’t be revolted by me.”
“I never was! You must believe me.”
“I’ll know when I come to this window. The look in your eyes when you see the real me . . . will tell me the truth,” he said.
And without so much as a reassuring or backward glance, he walked onto the balcony, closing the doors behind him.
Chapter 22
H
is mammoth appendages filled with air, and he caught a gust, circling the roofline of their inn. As he beat his wings, then glided lower, he knew he should land on his wings, then glided lower, he knew he should land on the balcony and face the truth—confront Juliana with his transformed body. Yeah, it wasn’t fair to her, dragging this out, but he couldn’t seem to bring his emotions under control. Apart from the daylight—and the modern sounds of the city below—he’d perfectly re- created the night when she’d destroyed him. He hoped the experience would help her regain her memories and explain the circumstances of her death.
And so he beat his wings again, feeling the uneasy power in his body gain momentum. He was different, too, more powerful, he reminded himself. The city, the weather, Juliana herself . . . they weren’t the only changes since 1893.
He’d not told her all of it, the harsh truth about the newly acquired power pulsing in his body. And what if they did come together in that bed, making love as he burned to do? What if he couldn’t be restrained or, even worse, lost control? He’d seen River in the throes of his sexual berserker state, knew how dangerous it could be. He never wanted Juliana be on the receiving end of that violent energy.
But that was because River could also shift into weapon form, wasn’t it? Still, Ari wondered whether he would suffer under the same compulsions, whether that part of the curse had blighted him, as well.
The wind rushed so intensely about his face that Ari’s eyes watered. He narrowed his gaze on the balcony, feeling his features shift and his body become more hawklike. It was a mix of pleasure and pain, the transformation, and he shrieked his raptor’s cry in reaction.
Turning, he approached the balcony, landing gracefully on both feet. For a long moment he stood there, blinking back the moisture from his eyes, savoring the feel of his wings settling along his back.
He kept himself to the edge, away from the French doors, as he composed himself, readied for the moment he’d thought never to relive—and thrilling at the thought of Juliana, half-undressed, waiting for him. But dreading the possibility that she might reject him a second time.
Rubbing a hand across his chest, he furled his wings tight and neat along his back and took three steps forward. With a trembling hand, he opened the doors and stepped inside.
Juliana lay on the bed, hair cascading wildly over her chest. Her corset was half-undone, revealing creamy, full breasts that seemed on the verge of popping free of the lingerie’s confines at any moment. The ties across the front strained, her breasts swelling upward and outward, and as he stared at the silk bindings, he yearned to tear into them. For a moment, his fingers nearly curled into talons; he was that eager to strip her bare. But he managed to restrain his hands from transforming and remained fully a man, save the wings across his back.
She blinked at him, her pale eyes widening, her lips parting. With a slight gasp, she assessed his massive, altered body. He became larger in every way while in hawk form, his chest bulking to provide the necessary strength for flight, his lower back thickening with bands of roping muscle. Even his manhood expanded when he turned to his hawk form.
Oh, what a shocking, horrifying, grotesque image he must make, he realized, reaching internally for the power he needed to become human again. To become the man she knew.
His eyes drifted shut. “I am revolting,” he groaned. “I can’t blame you for thinking so.”
“Ari,” came her throaty reply. “Look at me. Now.”
He kept his head bowed, terrified of meeting her gaze: It was painful enough to remember glimpsing rejection in her expression years ago.
“Aristos,” she commanded, and he heard the rustling of her satin and crinolines as she approached.
“Stay back,” he warned without looking up, his raptor’s voice rasping and rough.
She laughed lightly. “Why on earth would I ever do that?”
She just kept coming closer. Then closer still, until she planted her pale bare feet in front of his booted ones. Still he kept his blazing, silver gaze fixed on the carpet.
Man up or pussy out
, he thought, recalling River’s words from the night before.
With a resigned sigh, he tilted his head upward, bracing for imminent rejection. He was an unnatural creature, formed in an
unnatural
way, whereas she was everything soft and lovely that had ever existed in his universe. How could she possibly want him, a silver-eyed devil?
But when he met her gaze at last, what he glimpsed leveled him completely. There was such fiery longing in her blue-eyed stare that he nearly fell to his knees and wept. All these years, he’d felt the bitter sting of her rejection, but those eyes revealed nothing so much as . . . genuine love.
He swallowed, blinking back at her, already reaching to unfasten his ever-tightening pants . . . because now he understood that he had always been wrong about her reaction to him on that long-ago midnight. The heat infusing her stare, her face, her body, revealed the truth: She wanted him. She had never found him repulsive.
“You, sir,” she said in a low, purring voice, “are the most beautiful, magnificent man I’ve ever beheld.”
Thank Olympus their suite was roomy, because at those words, his wings assumed a life all their own and began beating with every pumping surge of his heart. He was still fully a man, even as his feathered appendages unfurled dramatically in reaction to her.
“Will he let me touch them?” Juliana whispered. “That’s what I thought, the very first time I saw them, so long ago.”
Only this time, there was no mistaking the raw need in her expression for rejection.
“Touch them?” he practically moaned back at her.
“I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.” She extended her right hand tentatively, and he noticed that it trembled. “Let me touch all of you, Ari. From your wings to your . . . other endowments.” She lowered her eyes, staring at the pronounced bulge in the front of his pants. She shivered slightly, appearing daunted. She was a virgin, after all. But then she tilted her chin upward, meeting his burning stare with conviction. “I
need
to touch all of you. Every part.”
“I won’t hurt you,” he tried warning her, but the words escaped as more of a hawk’s cry. She jerked backward in reaction, withdrawing her hand, and he panicked—until she began giggling uncontrollably.
“Ari . . . your voice,” she said, pressing a hand to her flushing cheek. Then she laughed more, beaming at him. “The rough sound of it . . . stirs me physically. I know that’s forward of me to admit, but . . .” She blushed more deeply, toying with the ribbons that fastened her corset. “Will you say my name? Let me hear the sound of it now that you’ve transformed? That would . . .
stir me
greatly, indeed.”
He was on her before she could even blink, nuzzling her neck, murmuring his hawk sounds all across her skin. Her pulse skittered beneath his lips, and he licked and suckled that sensitive spot.
Along his back, his wings reacted in a display of deepest pleasure, fanning wide behind him. When he was this deeply aroused, they craved sensual touch as much as he did. The wings were one of the most erogenous areas of his body, too, another masculine, powerful extension of his form. His mouth found Juliana’s, his urge to consume her, to take her, almost more than he could bear.
And that was when he felt it: the first, lightest caress of a fingertip along the feathers of his right wing.
Juliana began her exploration cautiously at first, not knowing what the feathers would feel like or how he would respond to her touch; as soon as she brushed her fingertips along the prickling edge, she shivered.