In the Company of Witches(40)

She knew the dangers of this kind of thinking. People were many layers, yes, but there was always one main layer to them, and she’d seen plenty of women engage in disastrous relationships by rationalizing away that one layer, giving too much weight to the less important ones. Mikhael had made it clear. He’d decided centuries ago to be a Dark Guardian, and he had no regrets or doubts in that choice. Perhaps he’d struggled with ostracism from friends like Derek, or the terrible things he’d had to do, but his one overriding layer was Dark Guardian.

Except for the unexpected bomb drop in the alley, she’d noticed he rarely talked about the specifics of what he did, as if he knew no one wanted to know. It must be odd not to talk about the thing that dominated his waking hours. And he’d said he had a lot of waking hours.

While she wasn’t sure of his motives toward her, she was pretty sure he wanted to continue their…whatever their relationship was, after his business with Isaac was concluded. So if she wanted him to be a part of her life, stopping by for croissants or to share her bed, she had to be willing to understand more about that main layer.

You may save a child to ward off evil; I will cause its death…Did she want to know more?

It started to rain, but she liked rain, coupled with the solitude of walking on the road with him. Picking up on it, he didn’t suggest they hasten their pace or reconjure the car. Instead, he stood while she held his shoulder to slide off her shoes and put her bare feet on the dampening ground. When they stepped off the main drive to follow a forest path to the house, where the canopies of the trees provided some cover, he delighted her by stripping off his shirt, letting his wings stretch out. One curved to shelter her head as the angle of his body did the rest. As the rainfall increased, finding its way through the treetops, the drops pattered onto his shoulders and slid down her collarbone and forearms. Turning her face up to the gray sky, she met his mouth for a rain-soaked kiss.

As it deepened, the rain grew more insistent, heavier. Thunder rolled in the distance, but it would come closer. She could sense it through the soles of her feet. Mikhael directed them beneath a large, moss-covered live oak, one of her gray-beard wizards, though deeper in the wood than those that lined her drive. Glancing up, she noted the spreading branches and remembered what he said about sleeping in them. She imagined walking through the forest and coming upon something like him, shirtless, his wings curled around him, one leg braced as he slept, those strands of hair drifting across his forehead with the night breeze.

Of course, Mikhael would never be caught asleep. But it was a nice fantasy, kissing him awake, like a reverse Sleeping Beauty.

“Want to ride out the storm up there?” he suggested.

She had clients coming in early, but they were regulars, a group of eight Army soldiers who worked the local munitions terminal. She could take some time. “If you can keep me dry.”

“I can keep you warm and dry.” He motioned to her to get onto his back. The wings disappeared, but she saw red lines like two scars curving along the inside of his shoulder blades, evidence of where they emerged. From earlier, she knew they would disappear, but she traced them now. When he bent to take her weight, she wrapped her arms around his chest. He guided her legs to clasp his hips.

“Hold on tight for this first part.”

She did, and he leaped with a breathtaking flex of muscle and graceful movement of limbs, catching the first branch and then climbing up from there, taking them to a triangular cradle between two thick branches and the trunk. He helped her dismount, steadying her, and then lowered her to a seated position between his thighs, bracing his back against the rise of one of the branches, their feet against the trunk and the prop of the other branch. He combed her damp hair from her face as she tilted her head back, traced the beads of water rolling down his jaw. Running her fingers through his much wetter hair, she slicked it back on his skull. When he leaned down to kiss her again, he stopped with just a space between their lips, registering her pensive expression.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’ve never been romanced, Mikhael.” She allowed herself a tight smile. She’d played plenty of sensual games, understood the lines and boundaries of them. “But I’m certainly not romance material, and neither are you. I want to know what you think this is.”

“No male has ever romanced you?”

The truth stung a little, but she lifted her chin. “I’ve had a lot of sex, Mikhael. No relationships.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” He gave her a direct look. “No woman has ever inspired me to walk with her in the rain, or crush peanuts for her sundae. Whether or not we’re romance material—your words, not mine—why shouldn’t we be allowed, if only for a few days, what so many others have? Life is short, whether you live one year or a thousand.”

She nodded, touched his lips. “So that’s all this is?”

“It is what it is. We’re attracted to one another. Not just physically. I like you, Raina. I admire you. You intrigue me.”

He curved a strand of damp hair around her ear. “I pursued Isaac here. You were unexpected. How that affects why I’m here or your responsibilities, I don’t know.” His attention moved to her mouth, that heated intensity suddenly back in his eyes, making her aware of everywhere their bodies touched in their current half-reclined position. “But I do know I want to kiss you.”

“I know I want to be kissed.”

The muscle in his jaw flexed. “Then why don’t we leave it right there? We’ll be like teenagers, like Bella, Edward and Jacob, believing that’s all that matters.”

Her lips curved. “Mikhael, we’re adults.”

“Yeah, thank Lucifer.” The dark gaze held her, that heat growing. “That means no one can stop me from what I want to do to you. Except you.”

She eased back a little, not ready to lose her mind to that kiss. Yet. “You never smile. You chuckle in that dry way, you have that cynical smirk, but you don’t smile. What makes you smile, even if just inside?”

Okay, there it was. She was going to stick her feet into those tricky waters. Turning over to straddle him in his partly reclined position, she sat up, letting her bare feet hang down on either side of the tree. He kept her secure in his grasp, but then she adjusted, clasping his hands to hold them palm to palm between their two bodies. They twisted and turned over each other, idle caresses of fingertips as he thought over a response. Since she tilted her head back, eyes closed to catch the stray raindrop on her face, his words hit her from the quiet darkness inside her head.

“A thief pulls in another man to work a job with him, a man whose character he doesn’t know. When they break into the house, they’re surprised by the wife. The new partner decides he’s going to rape the wife, but the thief pulls him off her. The partner is a bigger man, a much better fighter, but the thief fights him anyway, makes the decision to set off one of the house alarms. Then he keeps the fight going until the police get there and arrest them both. He went to prison for ten years. But the wife is safe.”

Raina opened her eyes. He’d laid his head back on the comfortable prop of the branch, was looking up through the trees, though as she watched, the raindrops made his eyes close as well. He continued speaking, encouraged by her attentive silence. “A junkie gives up on her drugs for two days to be clean enough to go to her daughter’s dance recital. Her daughter is happy, even though Mom has the shakes, because she smiles at her and tells her she did good. The mother will be stoned by nightfall, won’t remember anything else after that, but they’ll both remember that moment.

“Another mother croons a lullaby to a baby outside their hut. She can hear artillery fire in the distance. Their small world is surrounded by tribal warfare, guns and drugs. It’s very likely the child will never reach adulthood. If he does, he won’t have a mother by the time he gets there. She’ll be raped, mutilated, murdered. Knowing the likelihood of that, she still takes the time to sing him a lullaby by the firelight.”

She swallowed, but he kept going, painting those stark pictures. “A homeless person sees a group of teens kicking a stray dog, planning to throw him in a Dumpster and set him on fire. He goes to the aid of the dog, and their cruelty turns upon him. They kick him until his kidneys rupture and he dies. But the dog has gotten away and a few weeks later is adopted by a family that finds him in the park. He becomes their cherished, beloved pet for many years.”

The words were simple, unembellished. But the aura of intensifying energy around him showed the significance of the images, their importance to a world that often seemed terribly lost. He opened his eyes, stared up into the trees. “These are things of nobility, a special kind of valor created against a backdrop of evil and violence. Noticed by no one except the recipients or those like me. Those moments don’t make me smile, but I find a different…warmth there.”

“There’s a hopelessness to it,” she said at length. “The idea that we only find the best in ourselves when we face the worst in others.”

He said nothing, and her mind drifted toward darkness, toward memory. “Where Elceus held me, there was a small window. One night, the full moon was in the right position for a few short minutes. It filled that view, the light falling on me. A moth came to the bars. Beautiful, silky wings. Orange and blue body. It got in, couldn’t get out, because that happens. It can’t see the way. I was chained, so I put my hand on the cold stone, waited. Eventually it crawled on my knuckles, went still, as if it was waiting, trusting me to take it to that window. So I put it back between the bars, watched it crawl away, then fly. It tore my soul out of my chest. I wanted to be that moth, because even in its short life, it had far more freedom than I could ever remember experiencing at that point. But when I helped it, it kindled a small spark inside me. Something good. Your stories remind me of that.”