Then, as if knowing a complaint was brewing behind her lips, he lowered his head to her, the dart of his tongue caressed and painted her nipple, catching the beaded tip of it between his teeth then sucking her hard against his palate.

It was like throwing gasoline on a banked fire. They went from idling desire straight to virulent passion. Their mouths crashed together, tongues tangling. Leo forgot about keeping her from touching his chest as he lost himself in her savage mouth. He stroked her sex with swirls of movement until she was taut with expectant nerves.

“Please,” she panted when she next came up for air. “Please!”

He could have teased her or tormented her some more, she supposed. She was, after all, an easy mark at that point. But it spoke volumes of his own impassioned investment as he left off from touching her in order to unbutton and unzip his jeans. Freed from its cruel prison, his erection made a sudden and stunning appearance. She reached for him even as he pulled her h*ps down a little farther on the couch cushions.

“Sweet mother of God,” he groaned when she wrapped her hand around him tightly. He thrust forward into her fingers, a heated curse erupting from him as she made thorough work of learning him by touch. He was doing the same, his fingers drenched by her saturated intimate flesh. The next instant he was thrusting an impatient finger up into her body, and then he made it a pair. She gasped, raising her h*ps toward the invasion of his touch.

He was so hot and heavy in her hands. She’d never had a human lover, and knew of very few Night Angels who ever had in their long lifetimes, but she’d always thought they would pale beside a lover from her own species. How wrong she had been. His fervor alone was something so different for her. Night Angel males were so cool, aloof to the point, sometimes, of looking like they didn’t really care one way or another. But this was so not true of Leo. He ran hot and made her run at equally blistering temperatures.

He thrust his fingers up into her again and again until she was calling out her increasing pleasure again and again.

“I could make you come just like this,” he said hotly against her ear. “Over and over, let you burn yourself up like a little melting candle. But I’m not going to. Not this time.”

And before she could stop it, her heart took flight at his words. Not this time. Which meant he wasn’t planning on doing this just once. She tried to rein herself in but she was running on pure adrenaline and couldn’t control herself. He pulled his hand free of her, pushed her thighs apart with a dominant surge of his hips, putting himself in bald contact with her heat. So eager was she that her back arched and pleasure swam through her. Pleasure as close as she could possibly get to orgasm but not quite. But the fluid movement of her own body made a stark contrast to the sudden inflexibility of his. He was very still again. Breathing hard, his muscular body tense and defined with need, he cursed.

How could he be so stupid? It had never entered his mind, not once, until he felt that stark touch of intimate flesh to intimate flesh. It was something he never did. Never once. Not bareback that is.

A condom. He didn’t have a goddamn condom. It wasn’t as though he had ever thought for even an instant when setting out on this little adventure that he would need one. But he’d always had one in his wallet because, you know, you just never know. He was always up for unexpected pleasures. But he had been stripped of everything because of Chatha, and that included his wallet, his I.D., and his emergency condom.

Fuck.

“Faith,” he rasped roughly near her ear. “We…I can’t…”

But she felt so incredibly good. Good enough to outweigh his fears and his sense of self-protection. And because he could feel that, because the temptation rode him that hard, he pulled away from her. He was off her and on his feet in the next heartbeat, stumbling with an awkward lack of coordination. He was a coward and turned his back on the shock written across her features. What the hell do you have to feel so bad about? You’re doing the right thing, his conscience whispered fiercely to him.

He heard her move and he grabbed his shirt up from the floor shielding himself with it as he tried to explain to certain body parts that there was no relief or fun in the immediate future. Why didn’t he explain himself? He didn’t know. Maybe because he was just as disappointed as he knew she was?

When he was finally able to redress himself he turned to her, running an agitated hand through his hair. She was sitting up, knees primly together, hands clasped loosely on her thighs. She had not buttoned her dress back up, and he found it incongruous until he remembered she was wearing clothing as an afterthought.

But it was her stricken expression that hit him to the quick, and it made his heart ache.

“No, no, no, no,” he soothed, hurrying to kneel before her, grabbing up her hands and squeezing them tightly. “This isn’t about you. This isn’t a rejection in the smallest of ways. Look at me,” he commanded, making her look into his eyes. He saw they were wet with unshed tears and he realized…for the very first time he really saw her for the gentle, emotional soul that she was. What Grey had showed him was only the surface, but it all rang loudly in his head. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be passionate. She wanted to be a mother one day and have a family and be…be happy.

“It’s just an inconvenience,” he said softly, bringing her tense fingers to the kiss of his lips. “It’s just the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong circumstances. Come here,” he said. Pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. He whispered into her ear. “There is nothing I want more than to make love with you right now. Don’t you dare doubt that. But…I’m not the kind of guy who has unprotected sex with anything that moves and turns his back on the possible consequences. Especially not with you.”

He felt her tense and he pulled back to see her wounded look.

“Faith! Look at me! I mean I won’t risk getting you pregnant knowing what I do about how damn dangerous pregnancy is for a Night Angel woman. Christ, do you think I’d be that careless? That thoughtless of you?”

She shook her head, but still she was silent, and then he realized it was because it was taking everything she had not to give in to tears. He had handled this badly, had insulted her unintentionally, and he’d confused her before making himself clear. In short, he was a dick.

He sighed, deflating as he rested his forehead against her knee.

“I suppose ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to cut it?”

“No. I mean, it’s fine,” she said at last. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for. This was a crazy idea all around. I mean, I’m a Night Angel. A Nightwalker. And you don’t…well, it’s different worlds, isn’t it? If not for Grey’s tampering, we wouldn’t even have considered…anyway, it’s like you said. It’s for the best.”

She stood up and walked away from him, leaving him there on his knees. What she was saying was very true, Leo acknowledged.

So why did it sting like a rejection so damn bad?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“This form is so limiting,” Apep observed, once again inspecting himself in the mirror. “I can’t sense things as well as I should. It’s seriously curtailing my omniscience. However, as time goes on it should improve. I am, after all, me. But it does leave me with a little bit of a problem.”

“Oh?” Chatha asked. He had taken a break from his dissecting amusements. Because he had the power to heal, he could do his experiments to a certain point and then heal his object of study; at the moment the little white rabbit was hopping around the room in confusion. What he found the most fascinating was finding the point where healing could no longer occur. What, exactly, was too far? When was that invisible line crossed? It was an art form, truly, to know exactly when that crucial moment was. That was why he had to practice on the smaller life forms. To perfect his craft.

“Yes, it does. I can’t see clearly what is happening at that little farm in New Mexico. I went to retrieve Kamen, that foolish man, so he could come back and worship me like he ought to have done, but then that Night Angel interfered. Come to think of it, I owe her a bit of comeuppance,” Apep said, straightening his spine at the sudden inspiration. “Yes. Let’s find that little bitch of a Night Angel and show her that she can’t be rude to a god and expect to get away with it. It’s my duty to do so.”

“Yup,” Chatha said. He had learned that agreeing with the god was the best course of action. And Chatha was happy to stay where he was as long as the god fed him new toys to play with. That idea made him perk up. “Play?”

Apep sighed in exasperation. “Very well, if you must!” he said. “I’ll bring the Night Angel here to you and you can play with her all you like. That should definitely teach her a lesson. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

“You had to make a baby.”

“Oh yes! That’s right. I have to have my priorities.” Apep was quiet for a moment, and then quickly grew bored. “This gestation process takes an incredibly long time.”

Apep sighed again. He would simply have to pass time entertaining himself with the Night Angel and whatever else turned him on.

“So let me search for her a bit.” Apep closed his eyes and reached out with his godly senses, looking for the signature, or ka, of the creature that had attacked him. It was easy, actually, because once his power had touched her power he had learned what her ka felt like and would, from that moment on, be able to search for it with ease.

Only, there was no ease, Apep learned with a stormy little frown. As far as he could tell, the Night Angel wasn’t in that more immediate dimension. She had disappeared. She couldn’t be dead, could she? That would be terribly disappointing. Especially for Chatha. He did want to make Chatha happy. After all, he’d grown quite fond of the little deviant.

Apep decided to section off a small part of his energy to keep an ear out for her in case she returned. It was possible she was in one of the scapes, as the Shadowdwellers liked to call them. There were several, although certainly more than the three the Shadowdwellers were aware of.

Thinking of the Shadowdwellers made Apep think about the curse that was keeping one set of Nightwalkers from seeing the other set. It had been a very long time since he had constructed that little gem of a curse.

Once upon a time there were several gods—all of whom were less powerful than Apep, of course—and they had come together to fight a great war against other gods, also not as powerful as Apep was, but a nuisance just the same. Each created a race of Nightwalkers to act as their champions. There had been a terrible war and eventually they had been victorious. Apep grudgingly had to admit the Nightwalkers they had created had played a very key role in that. As a reward for all their hard work, the gods had set the Nightwalkers into the mortal world where they could live in peaceful retirement…and be available should the need arise.

Over time peace had grown frighteningly boring for Apep. To amuse himself he was reborn in mortal form and decided to play a delightful game of mortal chess. He captured cities, decimated armies, violated women. Yes, it was all great fun. But soon his nemesis, a god named Amun, had come and warned him to evacuate his corporeal form or he would forcibly extricate him from the mortal world. Apep had not liked the ultimatum, but he knew Amun was very good for his word and that he would enlist the help of the other gods to see it done. And, while no single god was more powerful than he was, a joined group of gods would certainly be something to take seriously.

Well, at the time he’d been having much too much fun to leave, so Apep had chosen to stay. But he had realized that that meant the gods could send the Nightwalkers after him and while he was omnipotent, his mortal body could be destroyed under the right set of circumstances and he would then have to start all over again. He had not been in the mood for that and had been determined to adhere to what he already had.

So in order to prevent that from happening, Apep had constructed this gorgeous, deeply involved curse that had made it so the Nightwalkers would be split in half and the two sets would be completely ignorant of the existence of one another. It had been very complex. It had taken a great deal of talent and power to make it so that, for instance, the written word of a Night Angel could not be read by a Demon. The words would be incomprehensible, the words shifting continuously. This way, if the Demon should stumble across a Bodywalker tomb or scroll, their minds would be blind to it. Then, if, say, a Shadowdweller physically bumped into a Night Angel, they would be none the wiser for it.

So the split had been right down the middle. Six, the Demons, Lycanthropes, Druids, Shadowdwellers, Vampires, and Mistrals were ignorant of the existence of the other six, the Bodywalkers, Night Angels, Wraiths, Djynn, Phoenixes, and Mysticals, and vice versa. Therefore it had made it impossible for them to join forces together against Apep, and eject him from his mortal form.