Eventually, she would drown.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Leo yanked Faith to him, captured her startled mouth with his and pressed a ravaging kiss on her. Not cruel, as he might have thought he was being. Faith knew to the bottom of her soul that he was capable of deep depths of brutality when it was called for, but the only way his kiss would be cruel would be if he stopped it before it culminated in its promise.

It was sweet and hot, dominant and powerful. He turned with a sharp movement, dragging her underneath himself on the couch. And still he kept his lips seared to hers…as if they were conjoined and could not be separated. His tongue swept into her mouth even as his hand swept up the left side of her body. His legs were tangled with hers, but she could feel the heat and strength of a hard muscled thigh pressing directly against her sex, the push of it against her telling her that it was very much on purpose.

The moment he let her take a breath, she quickly said, “I only meant that after having such a brutal brush with death you, of all people, would grip life in both hands! That you’d want to live every moment to its fullest and without regret.” When he didn’t rush back into his attack, she slowed down for a breath and met his dark, troubled gaze. “I thought…I thought if you really wanted me, you wouldn’t have let all the rest of it get in the way.”

But now she saw that he’d been trying to protect her from himself. She saw it in his sable eyes, settled deeply in with the hunger of desire. He hesitated only a moment before catching her mouth back up, but this time the kiss was slower, almost achingly sweet, most certainly full of a gentle craving. He kissed her like that until her head was spinning and her whole body was humming with need.

This time when he separated from her, both of them breathing as if they’d run a passionate marathon, he said, “I’ve always thought I should never subject myself onto a certain kind of woman. I always…I chose very carefully. Decent enough to tolerate, indecent enough to not care when I disappeared the next morning without so much as a goodbye or thank you. I’m a killer, Faith. I have a lot of blood on my hands and it’s not going to change. I’m not a bad man, I just do bad things to bad people. And you know…from what Grey showed us…you know it took a lot for me to let someone in. When I kiss you that’s what it feels like. Like I’m letting you in. And I don’t know if I can handle that. I don’t know if I’m going to f**k it up and end up f**king you up in the process.”

“You won’t f**k me up,” she said breathily. “I’m a big girl. If you tell me you don’t want me to make long-term plans, then I won’t.”

“It’s just…it’s hard to separate the feelings of…I’m not that man, Faith. I’m not the one Grey showed you, the man who can love you.”

She didn’t think it would have hurt to hear him say that, but it did. And it was a deep hurt. As if he were already her lover, as if he’d already told her he loved her with all his heart and soul, and then told her he had changed his mind.

But unlike a Night Angel male, he was unable to read her scroll and see the depth of that pain. She somehow managed to keep it out of her expression too, otherwise he would never have believed her when she said, “I’m okay. I promise you, I’m going to be all right with that.”

It was like setting him free. All of the confusion between them that had caused their passion to seem stilted and jerky evaporated. The minute he returned his mouth to hers, the minute she absolved him of any responsibility, he became a different being.

The electricity of kissing another Night Angel was something familiar and expected, but somehow Leo’s kisses began to convey an even more powerful current. There was so much hunger behind it that she could hardly breathe. His hand slid down her side and thigh, quickly sweeping beneath the skirt of her dress. When she tensed, afraid he was going to skip all the niceties now that she’d devalued herself to the worth of a brief one-night stand, she was amazingly mistaken. He merely pulled her leg tight against his hip.

No. He didn’t skip any of the niceties at all. He kissed her with the hot, fiery need of a new lover, like when the flirting and mating dance was done and the physical act was on the cusp of resolving. She found her arms hooked beneath his, her hands latching on to his broad shoulders, just touching him there, just touching him anywhere was giving her the complete impression of the strength he harbored in his body. He breathed hard and hot into her mouth, his craving for her more than thoroughly announced by the deep masculine groan he let roll out of him.

“My god,” he said against her lips, his tongue punctuating every word he said with a lustful stroke. “I can feel your heat against me.”

To emphasize what he meant, he pressed his thigh tightly against her sex. The pressure sent off a wild rush of arousal and she gasped.

“I can’t wait to get my hands on that,” he said heatedly. “Not to mention my mouth.”

She went utterly and absolutely wet. The promise was unbearable and she moaned deeply under the onslaught of it.

“Seems like you’re pretty damn eager too,” he said with a chuckle, dragging his kisses away from her mouth and burning a path down her throat. She felt his teeth catching her skin in the smallest little impressions of a bite. She felt his hand rushing up the line of her body and streaking from thigh to hip to waist to ribs and then…then he caught the weight of her breast in his hand just in time to hold her up to his mouth.

He could have unbuttoned the bodice of the dress easily and exposed her, but he didn’t. Instead he mouthed her through the thin fabric, the stroke of his tongue muted and dampening the cloth, but electric and unbelievably arousing. Her ni**les distended, as though yearning for the promise of his bare mouth. She moaned softly as her hands crawled up restlessly into his collar and hair. There was just too much fabric between them. She was frustrated by it and it must have transmitted because he gave her a chuckle.

“Trouble?” he asked, his breath warm through her dress as it tumbled over her.

“Take your shirt off,” she commanded him, tugging at his collar for emphasis.

He went very still. As still as a wild animal crouching in the grasses, waiting for a predator to pass them by. But it only lasted a moment, such a brief moment that she thought she had imagined it by the time he pulled away from her.

He rose up on his knees and, grabbing it by the collar at the back of his neck, he stripped off his shirt. The shock of what she saw was like a cold-handed slap across her face. On his right side, splayed over his ribs and wrapped halfway around his body was a massive tattoo. But that wasn’t what made her breath catch in her throat. No…it was that everywhere, streaked left and right, vertically and horizontally and diagonally, almost every single inch of his chest was covered in angry red weals of flesh. He had been injured and was healing, but it was more than obvious that he had not healed enough.

“Oh my god! Leo!”

This, she realized as her shaking hands went to his injured skin, touching it with fierce fragility, this was what had been done to him. It looked horrifyingly like someone had cut strips of flesh from him, and just looking at the grim set of his jaw she knew that it had been exactly that and that he had been awake for every last one of them.

It was no wonder he hated them all.

His scroll was lit up with brilliance as a storm of emotions marched through him. Passion and rage. Craving and hate. Wanting and resolution. Need and vengeance. It was a battle between what he was feeling with her right in that moment and what he had swimming in his heart and the memories connected with the injuries he had suffered. He caught her shaking hands in his, made her look into the dark chocolate of his eyes.

“This is not all of who I am and it doesn’t matter in this moment. I need for it to not matter between us, Faith.”

And she saw that it was very much the truth. He wanted something new and good to wash away the muck and poison of the rage and impotence he felt every time he remembered what had happened to him.

And she wanted more than anything to give that to him. Using her captured hands to pull him back down to her, she reached for and caught his mouth. She swept her tongue over his lower lip in an erotic invitation, drawing his focus to her mouth. He let go of her hands to brace a hand beside her head, kissing her as deeply as breathing would allow, yet holding his torso up and away from lying against her.

She was sorry her shock had interrupted their passion, but she was determined to win it back. It really wasn’t difficult at all. Her entire body still burned for him, against his denim clad thigh she was still wet for him. She reached for the buttons on her dress, determined to rid herself of the frustrating clothing she wore. Faith almost never wore clothes, especially as it was a little painful to use her wings through the confines of clothing. Of course, she made the exception where clothes were concerned when she had to travel in the human world of daylight. But she had chosen this dress because of the light, breezy fit of it so she didn’t feel as confined.

Now it was frustrating her, an obstacle in the way of her desire to be touched. And Leo, damn him, was clearly laughing at her expense.

“Stop that and help me,” she growled at him impatiently.

“Your wish is my command,” he said with amusement. “Consider me your personal Djynn.” He moved her hand away from the stubborn buttons, pausing a moment to cup the swelling shape of her left breast before finally reaching for the first closed button. “But if I grant you this wish,” he said as he popped the thing free with an easy brush of his fingers, “you know there’s going to be a price to pay.”

“There’s always a price to pay for wishes,” she agreed breathily. Watching him undress her with such excruciating slowness felt like dying a little from deprivation.

“Always,” he agreed, the second button slipping free. “And I’m going to ask a very high price for this wish.”

“Oh?” It was less of a word and more of a sigh as it escaped her.

“Yes. Do you want to know what it is going to be?”

She nodded as the third button was undone. She couldn’t have formed a coherent word if it was required to save her life, because now, with every unbound button, he was pausing to stroke ever-so-light sweeps of his fingers over whatever flesh was newly exposed. It was mostly the line of her breastbone, and she arched her back a little to try to let her breast come into his sight more fully. But the bodice was too snug and her br**sts too full to allow for it. He continued to work the buttons free, and it frustrated her that they ran the entire length of the dress. She was quite certain they weren’t meant to be undone completely. Didn’t he remember they were working with very limited time? She could feel the approach of daylight creeping along the follicles of her hair.

“Surrender,” he exhaled against the skin of her upper belly. “Complete and total and utter surrender.”

Faith felt yet another button give way and now his tongue was drawing a heated circle around the outside of her navel. At that point she had no choice but to lose patience. If he was working to frustrate her, he was doing a bang-up job of it, but she’d had just about enough of it.

Apparently, so had he. Impatience blared through his scroll, and suddenly he was surging up onto his knees, reaching for both halves of her dress and with a yank that oozed barely repressed ferocity, he peeled apart the bodice, jerking the dress down her shoulders and arms, forcing her to wriggle them free or else find herself tied down by her clothing. She couldn’t stand the idea of that so she let him strip her to her waist.

“Jesus,” he said on a quick breath as he looked down at her. “How did I not see it before?”

“See what?” she asked shakily as she watched him reach toward her with fascinated fingers. He touched her along the bottom swell of her left breast.

“That you aren’t as universally black as I first perceived you as being. That, like your lips, you’re actually a very deep violet at your ni**les and…”

He went back to her buttons, this time working quickly. She knew what he was looking for and it made her entire body flame with a flush. In another instant she was na**d beneath him and he was reaching to touch searching fingertips to the nude pillow of flesh protecting the entrance to more darkly violet parts of her. He moved his touch down and separated the lips of her sex, spreading her wide so he could inspect the color variation more thoroughly.

“Here,” he finished his sentence at last. “Such a pretty, dark color.” He let his fingers slide into the very wet folds of her flesh and she heard him growl with pleasure. She knew it was because she was so obviously aroused by him. And as one hand explored her there, the free hand came back to the task of shaping and toying with her breasts. The full strokes, touches, and the plucking of his fingertips on her ni**les felt incredibly glorious and astoundingly frustrating all at once.