Guilty as Sin (39 page)

and Dax. Michael administered a kitten lick, and Lise bucked, keening. Leaving it to the

Aetherii to hold her down, he slipped a finger deep into her clutching sheath and

followed it up with a second one.

From somewhere overhead, Dax rumbled, “Make it good, Michael.”

He glanced up and knew he
‟
d take the erotic image of his two beautiful Aetherii to

the grave. Dax still had the fingers of one hand parting her labia, but with the other he
‟
d

reached around to cradle a breast, his thumb rasping the nipple until it stood proud and

dark. He was kissing her neck, his hair tumbled across her creamy skin like a tawny

autumn waterfall, russet mixed with gold and umber. Shining feathers rose all around

them, charcoal and bronze and green and steely silver. As Michael watched, Dax bent to

her gasping mouth and sealed their lips together, swallowing her cries as if he owned

her very breath. Lise strained toward him, keening, but simultaneously, her hips rose to

offer her vulnerable, weeping sex to Michael, pleading wordlessly for release.

Good?
Twister
‟
s balls, he
‟
d make it the best godsbedamn orgasm she
‟
d ever had.

With exquisite care he nibbled the little prow of her clit between his lips. Then he

applied the tip of his tongue in a leisurely spiral lick, pushing at the hood, gradually

increasing the suction, gauging her response by the quivering pressure of her sheath

against his fingers. When he crooked his fingers and stroked inside, she broke, writhing

and bucking. Michael sucked firmly and her sheath clamped down hard, her thighs

going rigid.

Ah, gods, she made wonderful noises, in her chest, in her throat, rather muffled by

Dax
‟
s lips and tongue, but gorgeous nonetheless.

Gradually the tremors eased, Michael easing her through the aftershocks with

gentle laps, using the flat of his tongue, loving the taste of her.

In the ensuing silence, the only sound was their breath, rough and uneven, already

out of synchronization as they withdrew from one another, separate once more.

Michael pressed a kiss high on the tender inside of Lise
‟
s thigh. The muscle beneath

the smooth skin quivered with reminiscent tremors, the same way something in his gut

still fluttered and squeezed.

“Good enough?” One brow arched, he met Dax
‟
s gaze.

181

Dax smiled, his eyes soft with what looked like genuine affection. Leaning forward,

he ruffled Michael
‟
s hair. “Oh yes,” he said contentedly. “At least I think so.” He drew

Lise into the curve of his arm. “Chick?”

She blinked, her usually clear gaze decidedly dreamy. “Uh,” she said. “I didn
‟
t

know… I
‟
ve never…” With a shuddering sigh, she pressed the heels of her hands to her

eyes. “Rip the Veil, I can
‟
t think.”

He
‟
d never thought to see the formidable Liseriel the Gray so completely unstrung,

her hair all mussed, her lips swollen, everything about her soft and sated with pleasure.

He had a sudden vision of her as a child, her solemn little face fierce with concentration

as she learned her letters.

Michael opened his mouth to say something dry and clever, but her tail coiled

around his upper arm and tugged. “Up here,” she said, and somehow he lost the

words.

The moment he was situated on the pillows, his nose in her hair and his chest

pressed against satiny plumage, she hummed with pleasure and burrowed into Dax
‟
s

chest, yawning. “Talk…in the…morning,” she mumbled, and was asleep before he

could frame a reply.

Michael drew her close, shifting his chest a little for the pure sensation of the

featherpearl in his nipple brushing against her wings. Placing a palm flat on her taut

little belly, he stared over her shoulder into green-gold eyes that shone with joy.

“How about that?” said Dax. “Three of us—and it worked.”

“Told you.”

One of those smiles that made the muscles in Michael
‟
s chest go tight. “So you did.

And it meant…everything.” Dax wrapped a hand around the nape of Michael
‟
s neck

and drew him closer. “Thank you.”

His heart thundering, Michael turned his head at the last moment. An infinitesimal

pause, and Dax continued on to brush warm lips across his jaw. “Go to sleep,” he

whispered. “You
‟
re safe with us.” Feathers rustled as a bronze wing settled over

Michael and Lise like a protective cloak.

“Hey!” he protested. “Listen, it
‟
s not like I need—”

But Dax was asleep, or giving an excellent imitation of it.

Michael let half an hour go by before he was able to force himself out of the

comfortable tangle of limbs and tails and feathers. Slowly, he backed away from the

bed, but neither of them stirred, Dax
‟
s breath not quite heavy enough to be called a

snore, more like an endearing rumble.

182

Sun is set, Shadow too.

Sleep, sweet babe, the dark night through,

In Lufra’s arms and mine,

In Lufra’s arms and mine.

Feolin lullaby (trad.)

* * * * *

Michael padded around the chamber extinguishing the lamps until only one

remained. By its light, he retrieved his scattered garments, but before he dressed, he

made the mistake of taking one last look at the bed. Twister take him, the best night of

his life, he wanted to remember it, remember
them
. The clothes slipped from his lax

fingers as he stood staring, paralyzed.

What the fuck was he doing? Was he completely insane?

Michael closed his eyes in a kind of agony. Who was he fooling? All he was good at

was preserving his miserable hide. That was it, the sum total of his entire career, of a

slum rat
‟
s life. He
‟
d loved Tannio, more than life itself, he
‟
d thought at the time—but he

hadn
‟
t, had he? Because Tannio had died—horribly—and Michael waited and waited,

but not even grief and horror had the power to destroy a healthy eighteen-year-old, and

in the end, he discovered he hadn
‟
t the guts to do it himself, assassin or no.

So he
‟
d made vengeance his atonement. Tannio
‟
s name had been the last word Idris

heard in this world. Looking back now, he had to wonder at his sheer blind luck,

inexperienced as he
‟
d been and almost incoherent with grief and fury. Then he
‟
d run—

and all these years later, he was still running, keeping himself safe. Being quicker, slyer,

stronger—it was all he knew.

But these two—

Michael
‟
s breath caught painfully in his throat. He couldn
‟
t fool himself any longer.

With them, keeping score,
winning
, no longer mattered. He
‟
d taken control of their

pleasure, had them both begging just as he
‟
d promised himself and it
didn’t fucking

matter!
Gods, Lise and Dax had snared him as surely as if they
‟
d built a trap especially

for the purpose. His eyes narrowed at the thought while his guts cramped and bile rose

sour in his throat. Had they—?

No. No, it wasn
‟
t possible. He might be foolish enough to have fallen hard, but he
‟
d

staked his life on his judgment of character too often to be mistaken. His lip curled with

self-derision. Dax and Lise were too honest, too good. Twister, too bloody
decent
,

though he wouldn
‟
t put anything past Jan.

183

He should go, but he couldn
‟
t pull his hungry gaze from the flowing lines of long

limbs, the curve of Lise
‟
s pink-tipped breast, Dax
‟
s square, stubborn jaw. The feathers,

the tails, they were fantastic, fabulous, but in the final analysis, they were only

adornments, fancy extras. He could do without them because they had nothing to do

with the essential humanity of his Aetherii, with Dax
‟
s easy good nature and Lise
‟
s

honor and intelligence and compassion.

He took a couple of steps closer. Just a few more minutes, so he could take the

memory out later and polish every facet like a purloined gem.

Lise opened her eyes.

For a moment, she almost didn
‟
t recognize him. She
‟
d become accustomed to the

thief
‟
s beauty, the regularity of his features, the arrogance in the tilt of his head, but

now… She blinked. He looked—the only word she could think of was
ordinary.
Lines of

strain showed on his face, his eyes shadowed with some deep emotion she thought

might be grief. He stood hipshot, with his usual unconscious grace, the lamplight

striking gleams off a shoulder, her featherpearl earring glimmering like a drop of water

suspended from a brown nipple.

Naked
. Lise stopped breathing. Yes, he was nude, his clothes in a crumpled heap at

his feet, but for the first time, she was seeing Michael stripped bare. Ah, gods, such

desolation. It wrung her hearts.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

He shook out of his paralysis and bent to pick up a shirt. “What does it look like?”

Very carefully, she sat up, Dax
‟
s wing draped over her lap like a bronze quilt.

“Come back to bed.”

He turned a sleeve the right way out. “A thief has no place here,” he said, his head

bent to the task. “I
‟
ll relieve you of my presence.”

“Veil-it!” Lise swung her legs off the bed, slithered out from under the wing and

came to her feet. Dax slumbered on, oblivious. “You have a place.” She paused. “If you

want it.”

Michael gave one of those all-purpose masculine grunts and shrugged the shirt on

over his shoulders.

Lise grabbed his arm, propelled by the strangest sense of urgency. “Oh no, you

don
‟
t.”

In the dimness, his eyes were a muddy brown. “It
‟
s for the best.”

The urgency boiled over. “It is not!”

“
Shh!
” When Michael laid a finger against her lips, she nipped it. He scowled at her

then smiled, cocky and cynical.

“I
‟
m a bad, bad man.” He brushed her lower lip with the pad of his finger. “Too

wicked for a solid citizen like you, Liseriel the Gray.”

He glanced at Dax
‟
s peaceful bulk. “Not to mention farm boy over there.”

184

Well, that was true enough. The whole thing was insane. The muscles in Lise
‟
s

shoulders tensed. Rip the Veil, this was important. She had the sense of teetering on the

brink of something potentially catastrophic, a storm that might blow up out of nowhere

and dash her against a mountain. Gods, and not just her alone. She looked from

Michael
‟
s set face to Dax
‟
s long body in the bed, the finest soul she
‟
d ever known.

As carefully as if she gentled a skittish
vran
, she slipped her hand around the thief
‟
s

waist under the open shirt, his skin warm and satiny beneath her palm. “Come sit with

me a minute,” she murmured, and led him to an elegant couch upholstered in crimson

brocade. Michael grumbled something under his breath, but he followed readily

enough.

She framed his face in her hands, smoothed a lock of hair from his brow. “It
‟
s a

funny thing, but I can
‟
t make myself believe you
‟
d hurt us.”

Michael
‟
s mouth twisted. “I don
‟
t generally kill the people I— The people I fuck.

Well, not on purpose.” He grasped her wrists and drew her hands away but didn
‟
t

release his grip. Thick lashes lowered to conceal his eyes. “Everything I touch turns to

shit, Lise,” he said gruffly. “Everyone I—” He broke off, his throat moving as he

swallowed.

“No.” In an instinctive desire to give comfort, she surged forward, but Michael held

her off.

“I have to go.” He made as if to rise.

Lise clamped her tail across his thighs. “Godsdammit, what happened to you?
‟‟
she

said, and he froze.

“Michael?” She extended a wing and folded it around his rigid shoulders. Cuddling

close, she nuzzled his jaw, enjoying the strange tingle of stubble against her cheek.

“C
‟
mon, chick, tell me.”

He huffed. “Don
‟
t. Pet names make my teeth ache.”

In her work for Jan, she
‟
d lost count of the number of interrogations she
‟
d done, but

she
‟
d never sensed her future hanging in the balance before.

She cleared her throat, heat suffusing her cheeks. “It was an impulse,” she said. “I
‟
ll

be sure not to do it again.” He laughed softly, relaxing a little.

But when she laid her open hand over the featherpearl earring dangling from his

nipple, he sucked in a breath. “
Lise
.”

Two small bumps pressed into her palm, both warm and throbbing. Behind them

his heartbeat—gods, just the one heart!—accelerated until it was positively thumping in

his breast.

“You risked your life to save mine,” she said, low and hard. “Let me return the

favor.” Against the sensitive skin of her earlobe, the featherpearl
‟
s mate pulsed like a

tiny heart.

“What? Don
‟
t be ridic—”

“You owe me, Michael.
What happened?
”

185

“With the kind of life I lead? What do ye fuckin
‟
think?” He fixed his gaze on the

heap of damp towels in the corner. “Someone died.”

“Because of you?”

He rolled his shoulders, the accent thickening. “I shoulda stopped it.”

“Could you have?”

“Yes. No.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bastard always did as he damn well

pleased.”

Not a woman then.

“So how is it your fault?”

“I shoulda…tried harder. Made him listen.”

It took all her professional discipline to keep her voice even, one hand carding

through his hair, the other still pressed to his heart. “How old were you?”

“Not sure. Eighteen, near enough.” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

“He was older.” By making it a statement rather than a question, she forced him to

commit to an answer. It was a technique Jan had taught her years ago.

“Five years.”

“He looked after you.”

Michael took a quick breath. “He was always bigger, stronger.”

“Your protector.”

“Yeah.” He tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, the weight of his skull cradled

in the cup of her hand. “Tannio taught me…everything. About pickin
‟
pockets, about

bluffin
‟
when ye got godsdamn all, about fuckin
‟
. What it was to be a man. How to

survive in the Slopes.”

What of Michael
‟
s parents? Gods, she didn
‟
t have the courage to ask. None of this

had been in his file.

“How long were you together?”

“More
‟
n twelve years. I weren
‟
t much bigger
‟
n the sewer rats when he found me.”

Lise
‟
s hearts contracted with pain and horror. Poor,
poor
little boy. But she knew

better than to speak the words aloud.

Lean fingers tilted her chin. “Don
‟
t waste any sympathy on me, birdy,” said

Michael. “I did fine.” His voice was clipped and assured again, no trace of accent.