“I thought a lot of religions were anti-gay,” she mused. “It’s good to know that at least the sphericanum—”
“I’m not gay,” he said.
“—accepts you,” she went on blithely. “You should be so proud. Not flaming, sadly, not since you lost your sanctified sword—”
“Enough.”
“How do you get consecrated weapons to be fiery, anyway? Is it, like, holy lighter fluid? I bet you were convenient to have around at all the blesséd barbecues.” She accented the word just as the sphericaenum did, but with an added fillip of scorn. “I wish it was summer right now—”
He lunged across the bar and put his hand over her mouth. Against his palm, her lips were soft, yielding, very unlike her words. His bare skin tingled where he touched her, as if the static electricity had zapped him again.
Behind the cat’s-eye glasses, her cloudy eyes widened.
“Just pour.”
She nodded slowly. He pulled back his hand.
Her mouth was still that lush, unbelievable red, leaving not the barest smudge of lipstick across his skin. Maybe he’d been wrong to think she was all artifice. Certainly whatever she thought seemed to spill out of those lavish, red lips.
She washed her hands at the sink and turned to the wall of liquor behind the bar. On other nights, he’d seen the wall lit, light sticks on each shelf gleaming upward through the glass bottles, row upon row of smooth, flowing, jewel-toned sculptures celebrating wickedness and wantonness. Although it was all dark now, still Bella’s hands went unerringly to each bottle.
Almost against his will, as if he’d already had too much to drink, he found his gaze tracing the shape of her through the wrap. The deep red was a ruse. Though it screamed for attention, underneath she was actually fine boned, tall only because of her ridiculous red boot heels, and almost fragile, like some retro Irish fairy. No wonder Liam Niall, the boss of the Chicago talyan, had gravitated to the Mortal Coil. With his own rough Irish history, he must have found some comfort—or at least familiarity—in the acerbic Bella McGreay.
For some reason, the thought of the tall, rangy league leader and the club’s mistress made Fane’s hackles prickle. He reminded himself Niall had found the love of his warrior life when he hooked up with the spunky Jilly Chan. The symballein bond linking male and female talyan had only been legend—even the sphericanum’s ancient records had forgotten when the bond was truth—but in his short, unwilling time with the Chicago talyan, Fane had seen legend come to life.
What a miracle for the demon-ridden man, to find someone whose soul—flaws and all—perfectly aligned with his own…
Over her shoulder, Bella asked, “Why don’t you drink?”
Distracted by his own thoughts, Fane answered a touch too honestly, “Because for a time I was doing too much of it.”
She turned, a tumbler and a shot glass in one hand, an unlabeled bottle in the other. The tumbler was cupped under her palm, the shot glass full of some dark liquid pinched with her finger inside the rim. She set the glasses on the counter and pushed the tumbler toward him, then downed the shot and licked her fingertip. “So why are you drinking now?”
He looked away from her dampened finger. “Because recently I haven’t been doing it enough.” And he’d come to rely too heavily on the temptation-blunting effect of his lost abraxas if the mere glimpse of her tongue made him this edgy.
She filled her glass again, all the way to the rim this time. “I hear you. The talyan have been in here almost every night, bitching and drinking. First Corvus Valerius and that solvo drug turning people into soulless zombies and then soul bombs breaking open portals into hell. Now Thorne Halfmoon. God knows what he’ll do.”
“God might know, but He hasn’t shared any info with the sphericanum.”
She lifted her glass. “Maybe the devil will tell.”
He clinked his glass against hers. “Here’s hoping.”
Suddenly reckless, he tossed back half the tumbler. The bite and rush of whiskey sour heat made him gasp. He idly noted he couldn’t see his cold breath anymore. Although if someone lit a match…
Bella lifted one brow. “Like it? The whisky’s a single cask from a local distiller, with a little secret of my own.”
“Fire and brimstone?”
She laughed, although the sound was almost hollow. “Something like that.” She poured a third shot but just held it.
The warmth drifted down through his belly, and he studied her more closely while taking a wary sip. “So what’s your deal, Bella?”
She made another soft noise, one he couldn’t identify. “No deals. Actually, I was thinking about charging you.”
From his wallet, he thumbed out a bill—a big one, although he didn’t check to see how big—and pushed it across the counter. “For your troubles.”
She touched the corner of the paper. “Worse troubles ahead.”
He reached for his wallet again, but she just repeated that empty laugh. “Does that always get you out of trouble?”
“No. I used to chop off heads too.”
She pocketed the cash. “Ah, a multi-disciplinary approach. You didn’t learn that from the sphericanum.”
He gave her a reproving look. “You must have learned that cynicism from the talyan.”
She tipped one shoulder in a careless way that made the red V neckline buckle around her breasts. “I don’t think they’d appreciate your judgmental tone.”
“The demon-ridden never do.” He drank again to drown the errant notice of her breasts.
She matched his reckless motion, and when they thumped their empty glasses down at the same time, their knuckles brushed.
No static charge this time, thankfully, because he thought the slow burn of alcohol in his blood might have burst into flame if there’d been even one stray spark.
Hell, just standing near the red-on-red mystery girl kindled his senses. The loss of his abraxas’ moderating influence was bad enough, but maybe his losses before were more to blame. It had been so long since he felt this…tempted. No wonder the talyan with their inner demons—repentant demons, but demons nonetheless—felt at home at the Mortal Coil.
She gave her empty shot glass a spin. “Can I get you something more, ex-warden Fane?”
His gaze fixed on her mouth as she said his name, the quick bite of her lip, the flick of her tongue against the back of her teeth. Since when did his name look like a sin?
With difficulty, he focused. “Nothing. I should be going.”
But he didn’t move. Not even when she boosted her elbows up onto the bar, leaned across the counter, and kissed him.
Chapter 2
She didn’t have much time, so Bella brought out the big guns: open mouth, tongue, moan.
Thank God—well, thank the devil; no, thank her own damn self—for the little secret she’d added to his drink. Despite that crack about judgment, his judgment would be just enough impaired, or so she hoped, to make this easy. To make
him
easy. He might have a divine entity sharing his skin, but he was a man first, alone, on his way to being drunk. Even the sphericanum couldn’t blame him.
Well, they probably would, but he wasn’t with them anymore.
For tonight, he’d be with her.
Fane had come to the Mortal Coil only a few times before, meeting in back corners with the league warriors. Even without the talyan grumbling afterward, she would have known him for an angel-man. There was a light to him—not an easiness or happiness or flimsiness; not that sort of light, not any sort of obvious glow at all. But the divine entity had marked him, indelibly and invisibly, like the club’s doorman stamped wrists with an ouroboros that shone only under a blacklight.
In the past, she had ignored him, all her instincts warning her she did not want that searching light turned on her. But tonight, the dark and the cold pressed down hard all around, a threat no one else could see, so she fought back with the soft, vibrant heat of his mouth on hers. If she could just stoke his light a little higher, just for tonight…
His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb at the point of her chin. She wriggled up higher onto the bar, faintly aware of the crash of glasses he swept aside. She would have laughed—or maybe yelled at him; glassware wasn’t exactly cheap—but with his thumb, he forced her mouth wider and deepened the kiss.
Oh, he was so deep in her, his hand sliding behind her nape and tightening, tightening. Her heartbeat slammed through her, pushing the dark alcohol to her extremities, setting every nerve ending ablaze, and settling into her core where she felt the cold, hard knot melting, her sex unfurling like a slow out-of-season bloom. His whiskey perfume swirled around her, and she moaned again—helplessly and without artifice this time—around the wet tangle of their tongues.
His fingers tangled in her hair, triggering the inevitable collapse. He gripped the mass, and she arched her neck at the ruthless pleasure.
Then he yanked back, ripping her mouth away.
She gasped, not in pleasure this time.
“Bella.” His growl roused something darker in her, and she clamped her hand over his, buried in her hair.
“You’re hurting me.” She thought her whimper would make his fingers spring open, but under her hand, his fist tightened.
“And you are…” He was still so close his hot, harsh breath scalded her bruised lips. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
She swallowed against the flutter of panic in her throat. Ex-warden he might be, but it was the sphericanum, not the man, who had her in his grip now. “It’s called kissing.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No, really. It’s called kissing. For a second there, you seemed to get the concept.”
He released her, too quickly, almost shoving her away. She caught herself, sprawled awkwardly across the bar, and straightened her glasses on her nose. The other glasses were broken on the floor somewhere.
“Just say no,” she murmured.
He slammed his open palm on the bar. The counter reverberated under her hands as she eased down to her feet.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“I think you can figure that out.” Shattered glass crunched under her heels. “I wasn’t exactly hiding anything.” Not about that, anyway.
“Are you working for Thorne?” From the ring of demand in his tone, she wondered if anyone had ever refused him.
This time she did laugh, loudly. “You really are clueless. Sorry about the kiss then.”
He muttered something under his breath, something inappropriate for an angelic warden. Even an ex one. “Why are you tempting me?”
She waved one hand in irritation. “Don’t make it all biblical.” Did it even count as tempting if he resisted so easily? “You don’t represent the sphericanum anymore.”
“The talyan don’t know what to make of you either.”
“They shouldn’t be so suspicious. I help them how I can.”
“They need more.”
“Don’t we all?” She crouched to sweep up the glass.
Angelic-possessed humans didn’t have wings, but Fane might as well have flown so quickly and quietly did he arrive behind the bar. He knelt beside her, his big body nudging her aside.
“Let me do it. You’re going to cut yourself.”
When was the last time someone had helped her pick up the pieces of anything? She steeled herself against any perilous weakening in her defenses. “What do you care? You just accused me of cahooting with a djinn-man.” She didn’t want to care that he cared, and yet…
“I don’t want your blood on my hands.” He managed to make it sound like it’d be such an inconvenience.
“It would be on
my
hands,” she pointed out. “And anyway, you have enough on your hands you wouldn’t notice a little more.”
He paused on an indrawn breath, then he let it out slowly as he piled the glass in his palm with precise little clinks. “It was for a good cause, the cause of good.”
Why the hesitation? Did he regret the demons he’d slain? Or just regret he wasn’t still wielding his flaming sword of retribution? “Whatever,” she grumbled to herself as she stood over him.
While he finished sweeping up the glass, the warmth of his him seeped into her legs, skin bared between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots. In the same way he nudged her back with his body, his very presence edged out the cold and dark.
He dumped the broken glass into the trash can beside the register and washed his hands. The lemony scent of soap cleared some of the lingering boozy air.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” she said stiffly. “I’ll give your message to the talyan when I see them.”
“Bella—”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“You always say it like a warning or an accusation.”
He ran one hand over his face, muffling his apology, such as it was. “That’s the warden in me.”
“Ex-warden,” she retorted, then winced. What was the point of poking him with the reminder?
He leaned in. “Ex.” His breath was a warm whisper against her cheek.
She startled a little, not realizing he’d come so close. “You can go now.” As she angled her face to track him, her tone lifted too, so the words came out as if she was uncertain, more a question, like she wanted him to stay.
Oh, please stay.
“Bella.” This time, his voice held neither threat nor blame, but still some rough undercurrent, as if he were struggling across a tricky path. “You shocked me. A couple of times, actually.”
“I would’ve thought you’d seen everything.”
“Too much maybe, but not everything.” He cracked his knuckles as if his empty hands made him edgy. “I hadn’t made it that far up in the sphericanum.”
And now he never would, not without his sword. The unspoken words hung between them.
“There is light in you still,” she said. The divine presence didn’t just evaporate. He would have the angel inside him until he died, even if the terrestrial organization of the sphericanum had no more use for him. She was suddenly, fiercely glad they had lost him, which meant she could find him. That lost light was the part she wanted, needed, as the city spun toward its darkest night.
Please stay, and lend me your light until the dawn.
She took a hesitant step closer, so the fuzzy cuffs of her boots brushed his trousers. The exposed skin of her thighs—just a few inches, but how much more she wanted, needed—heated at his nearness.