Instead of turning and kicking off the wall again, he surfaced beside her legs. Standing in the chest-deep water, he braced his hands on the edge of the pool, water streaming over his heavy shoulders and chest.
He pushed the water out of his eyes. “Everything all right, princess?”
“I came down to ask the same thing. But I know it is not. And that you—”
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
All right, she’d come back to it. “Okay. So I haven’t come to discuss that with you, but instead to let you know how my chat with Camille went.”
“From what I heard of it out here, your call wasn’t so much a chat as a list of things you want her to do.”
She marveled. The War Room door had been closed. His hearing was truly spectacular now. “Yes, well. She likes to be useful.”
That drew a short smile from him.
She continued. “She’ll have the community elders gathered at her apartment the day after tomorrow.”
“And I’ll be convincing them to go along with me.”
“Yes.”
After he convinced Malkvial. He’d make a deal with a demon, and the next day, he’d convince every major European vampire community to join in with him.
“That’s what I thought,” Deacon said, sounding resigned.
Her heart ached. “Where would you like to meet with Malkvial?”
“You don’t already have somewhere picked out?”
She shook her head. “You are the one taking the risk. It should be somewhere you know the territory, where you have the advantage of location. And where I can set up surveillance ahead of time.”
He closed his eyes, as if trying to picture such a place. “I got rid of my property in Prague. The community meeting places, the house. I wouldn’t want to make a deal with a demon there, anyway.”
No, not in the house where his partners had been killed by the last demon he’d made an agreement with.
“Should it be a public location?”
“No,” Rosalia said. “He’ll want to test you. He’ll interpret your caution not as prudent, but as a weakness.”
He opened his eyes. “I’m going to end up hurting tomorrow, aren’t I?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
His jaw clenched. “What about the church I found you in six months ago? Your brother owned it. Is anyone using it now?”
On the northern side of the city, Lorenzo’s church was situated near his house and had once served the vampire community. Beneath it lay the catacombs where she’d run into Belial’s demons. The same lieutenant who’d directed Caym had been the one to drive the spike through her head, leaving her helpless to the nosferatu.
She didn’t remember any moment of those eighteen months beneath that church. She still hadn’t been able to bring herself to enter it again.
“I own it now,” Rosalia said.
He must have read her hesitation. He shook his head. “It’s too close. It might lead him to you.”
She considered that. “Actually, he’d probably assume that you would choose a city that was only loosely connected to you. He wouldn’t think to search for you here, afterward.”
“And it fits.” His face was grim. “I led Irena there and betrayed her for a demon. Now I’ll make a deal with another.”
“Making a deal,
with the intent to kill him
,” she stressed.
“Betraying a demon instead of a friend is that much different, then? It just erases what came before? I don’t think it works like that.” His gaze narrowed on her. “And what of you? That’s not a good place for you.”
“Considering what you have to do, I can make it through.” She studied his shuttered expression. “I know how much I’m asking, Deacon—”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Considering the list of humans I’m compiling, I know exactly.”
Bringing in the nephilim hinged on breaking the Rules—something that Rosalia would set up. Something no Guardian should do. Fail or succeed . . . what Guardian could respect her afterward?
He was watching her face. “Maybe you do know.”
But she’d known all along. Deacon, when he’d agreed to help her, had thought he’d only be slaying demons. The burden of that was a heavy one.
“
Now
you don’t look all right.” He leaned back, as if to get a better look at her. “Confess, princess.”
“Confess what? I’m surprised you don’t know. Didn’t you hear everything in me?”
“No. Just sound. A
lot
of sound.” The corners of his mouth deepened in a smile. “Apparently the nephil blood shouts over everything else.”
So he hadn’t known? She’d taken that risk, opening herself, but he hadn’t heard it.
She wanted to laugh. And she supposed it served her right, for trying to take the easy way out—letting him into her blood instead of telling him.
Showing
him.
“I haven’t done this the right way,” she confessed. “I’m terrified of a mistake, but the biggest one has not been in execution of this plan, but how I have approached you—and kept so many things from you. I do not know if I can make up for it.”
His sigh was a heavy thing. “I didn’t sign up for this, no. But I’m here now, and no one’s got a knife to my throat. So just stuff your making up for it.”
“I just need to—”
“Overcompensate?”
She flicked water at him with the tip of her left wing. “I need to say thank you. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you from the beginning about Malkvial.”
“How about you say thank you when it’s over, and I’ve pulled off this thing with Malkvial.” He looked up at her; then his gaze slid over her wings. “Jesus Christ, Rosie. Considering what happened tonight . . . some apologies just got turned around. I should be begging for forgiveness at your feet.”
“I could have locked the door,” she said.
“Why didn’t—”
She cupped his cheek, and he broke off. He tore his gaze from her wings. Leaning sideways, she pressed her mouth to his, a soft graze.
“I wanted you,” she said. “And I’m not above taking advantage of an opportunity to have you.”
His brows drew together and his mouth opened—she kissed him again, slowly this time, sliding over until he stood between her legs.
His hands came up, curled around her waist. Water slapped the tiles.
Rosalia slipped into the pool. Heavy warmth enveloped her wingtips, saturated by water. Deacon pressed her up against the pool wall, his hands sliding up her back, and pausing when he encountered the base of her wings.
She shivered as his fingers traveled up the soft, downy feathers covering the frame.
His mouth hovered over hers. “That feels good?”
“Yes.” Not like the almost unbearable caress between her legs, but like a stroke over sensitive skin. “I’m not used to anyone touching them.”
His hand skimmed down her spine. She shivered in the same way, and he laughed quietly.
“What part of you is used to a touch?”
She didn’t think it mattered. Even if he did this a thousand times, she would still enjoy it. And enjoy the feel of her hands on him even more.
The thick muscles of his chest, the broadness of his back. She found nothing that she didn’t love to explore. The sensitive spot on his side that made him jerk away from her fingers, warning her not to tickle. The ridge of a scar, the coarseness of the hair that drew her fingers down. He kissed her deep when she found him hard beneath his shorts. She wrapped her hands around his length and freed him.
She couldn’t resist. “Does that feel good?”
He laughed. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he braced his opposite hand on the lip of the pool, and with a powerful surge, lifted them out.
Her wings drooped, heavy and sodden. She shook them. Her skin prickled in the heat. The soaked silk of her dress clung to her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.
Deacon led her to a patch of lawn, laying back on the grass and pulling her down over him. Straddling his hard stomach, she leaned forward to kiss him, stroking his fangs with her tongue, relishing his groan of need.
“I want these in me, too,” she told him.
His body went rigid, and he stared up at her with intense, heated eyes. “You liked that?”
“Yes.” Oh, God, yes. When she’d imagined the pleasure of him taking her blood, she hadn’t come close to the reality. “And I don’t have anything to hide.”
Still, she trembled as he cupped the back of her neck and scraped his teeth against her throat.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I want it again. That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.”
“Afraid of losing control? Trust me.”
“Always.”
A faint pain stung her throat. The flat of his tongue swirled against her skin. Pleasure twisted through her, tightening her nipples, a subtle ache in her clitoris that demanded friction. She rocked her hips, grinding her sex against his ridged abdomen.
Breathing hard, Deacon gripped her thighs. “You taste so good, Rosie.”
“More,” she said. “Everywhere.”
He followed a scrape against her collarbone with another lick. She arched back, panting, her blood turning molten, heated through to her core. Beneath her, his stomach flexed as he rose onto one elbow. He offered a wicked smile before he ripped the front of her dress.
His tongue circled her nipple. Rosalia tensed, her anticipation so high it was almost a pain inside her. She worked her hips, pushing her sex in a slick burn over his stomach. He drew the tip of her breast between his lips. Rosalia moaned. His mouth felt so good, he didn’t even need to—
The soft bite came as a surprise. She jolted forward, but he caught her. Then he began to suck and she could only feel him, in her blood, hard behind her, beneath her. Crying out, she cupped the back of his head and held him close, her eyes shining across his dark hair.
She wanted to weep. She wanted to laugh. But she only gasped, her face tilted to the night sky, euphoria moving through her, expanding through her veins and tightening her skin, a frenzy of sensation. His left hand slipped between her legs. His fingers parted her, pressed in, began a slow, slow rhythm until she came apart, her body stiffening, her wings flaring out and shaking.
Deacon released her breast, returning for a soothing lick before laying back in the grass and staring up at her. Something in his eyes hardened. “I shouldn’t even be touching you, princess.”
Rosalia thought she would die if he didn’t. Leaning forward, she kissed him. “You should. You truly should.”
His laugh held a harsh note. “I’m too damned needy to disagree.”
If he needed, then she’d give. She kissed him again, a sweet, wet tangle of lips and teeth and tongue. When she broke away, his eyes were a stormy green, his face harsh with his arousal. He came up on his elbows again.
“Scoot back, Rosie.”
It was a guttural command. She slid down his stomach until the steel weight of his erection bumped up against her backside. His breath hissed in as she lifted her hips and reached back for him, dragging his length through her slick folds.
“Take me deep now. Until you can’t take any more.”
Her wings whispered over the grass as she rose up to her knees. He was hard and big in her hand, soft skin over steely flesh, his pulse beating headily against her palm. Positioning the thick head at her entrance, she slowly pressed down. Her body stretched, accepted.
His teeth clenched. His hands fisted in the grass. “I took you so hard, Rosie.”
She remembered how hard, the excitement of being caught up in that maelstrom. Her sex responded in a liquid rush, and she moaned. “Yes.”
“I hurt you.”
Her eyes flew open. She said fiercely, “No.”
She pushed down, taking him to the root. His beautiful body arched, muscles straining as his hips lifted. Bracing her hands against his wide chest, she rode him, watching his face, the clamping of his jaw, the way his mouth fell open and he dragged in air before groaning her name. His hands roamed her thighs, her belly, pinching her nipples and then hauling her down to kiss him, hard and deep. His biceps bunched beneath her fingers and he threw his head back, but she followed him, sensing how close he was, wanting to be there with him. She drew his mouth to her neck.
He reared up to sitting, shoving her down over his thick length even as he sank his fangs in her throat. Rosalia cried out as the orgasm fried her senses, as he pulsed deep inside her.
Panting, she let her wings fall forward, wrapping around them. Deacon rolled her over so they lay on their sides, tucking her against him, her wings spread out on the grass behind her. Her head still spinning, Rosalia looked up at the stars. She used to dream of flying up there. Using her Gift, and seeing how far the darkness went.
Now she was just glad to be here.
“I love you,” she said.
He didn’t say anything. She lifted her head. His eyes were closed, his mouth in a firm line, bracketed as if fighting off pain.
“Deacon?”
“Don’t, Rosie. Just—Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t love you?”
Too late for that.
He rocked to his feet, leaving her on the ground. Stalking over to the pool, he swept up his clothes. Anger heated his psychic scent.
Anger? If he’d been unsettled, she could understand. She’d said it out of nowhere. They had a lot to deal with. Her timing might be atrocious. But
angry
?
She stood, formed her black shirt and pants. “Deacon?”
He jerked on his trousers. “Don’t manage me, Rosie.”
“
Manage
you?”
“Yeah. You’ve got me where you want me, like I said. No knife at my throat. I’m in. You don’t need this to persuade me.”
She looked at the grass, flattened by the weight of their bodies. “You think I did this so that you’d meet Malkvial?”
“Not the sex. We’re good together that way. But
love
, Rosie? You overplayed your hand.”
“I didn’t
play
anything.”