Rebel (11 page)

I laughed. “Are you crazy? No one needs to warn me about Cain. I can see just how dangerous he is, and I’m not going anywhere near him.”

“You may not have any choice in the matter. He’s far too interested in you, and from what I’ve heard, that’s not like him. His interest makes no sense. Not that you aren’t gorgeous, but Cain arrives only to disrupt things, create havoc. Taking you to bed wouldn’t further whatever agenda he has.”

“Don’t!” I protested. I was growing unnaturally warm at the vision her words were drawing for me, and last night’s dream came back to me in blazing detail, and my skin warmed. I took a deep breath. “I promise you, Tory, that I am keeping my distance from Cain. I don’t want to have anything to do with him, and I can recognize a danger when I see one. He isn’t some dream lover come to save me.” He wasn’t a dream lover at all.

Tory looked at me long and hard. “Maybe. I still
think you’re underestimating just how dangerous he could be.”

“I’m not. He’s just not that dangerous to me.”

“You’re wrong.” She sighed. “Whatever. We need him to leave, but right now I don’t know how or even
if
Raziel can kick him out.” She rose, striding across the tiny room to look out the window. “Michael told me what happened to Cain. He saw his wife and unborn child butchered by Uriel for his transgressions, and the other angels stood by and did nothing. Let’s just say he has a reason to hold a serious grudge.”

“Oh God,” I said, feeling sick. “No wonder they’re afraid of him. He has a huge score to settle.”

She shrugged. “If that’s why he’s here. It’s not the first time he’s been back, so maybe the time for revenge has passed. Whatever his reasons, the Fallen are watching him, prepared to counteract whatever he might do. I don’t want you caught in the middle.”

I laughed. “I’m hardly likely to be. I think you’re wrong. Oh, not about his malice. But I’m in no particular danger. I’m just someone he’s practicing on. He likes to see me squirm, but there’s nothing more than that. Believe me, I’d know.”

“I thought you weren’t able to look into your own future.”

I made a frustrated sound. “I can’t look into anybody’s future. It either comes to me or it doesn’t. But no vision has ever come to me about myself.”

My dream last night meant nothing, I told myself. Just a confluence of circumstances. “You don’t have to worry about me, Tory,” I continued. I needed to convince her, almost as badly as I needed to convince myself. “I’m just a toy for Cain to play with when he happens to see me. Whatever his scheme is, I have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“I don’t—” Tory began.

“Trust me,” I interrupted. “But, just to make you feel better, I’m going to move my things up here temporarily. I know there’s nothing to worry about—he’ll never even notice I’m not next door. It will be easy enough to avoid him.”

“You know you’re a pain in the ass, don’t you?” she grumbled.

“Yes,” I said, shooing her out the door. “But you love me anyway.”

I closed the door behind her, then turned to look at the small room. I slid down on the narrow bed, letting the cheery smile vanish from my face, letting the tension drain from my body in the cocooning half-light of blessed solitude. None of this made sense. I didn’t bother to look for a mirror—I knew exactly what I looked like. Cute, rather than gorgeous. Hair too curly, eyes an ordinary, changeable hazel, body too short, too curvy, too ordinary. I had no interest in drawing men to me, particularly not someone like Cain. I was happy, damn it.

Sitting up, I looked around the room. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting, sending long shadows up the walls, but I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I would be safe here. I had spoken nothing but the truth—Cain rattled me, deliberately, when he saw me, but he would never seek me out. I was safe here.

“There you are,” said Cain. He’d opened the door so silently I hadn’t even noticed. He slid inside and closed the door behind him, while I sat frozen, staring up at him. “You’re a hard woman to track down. Are you hiding from me?”

C
AIN WANTED TO LAUGH AT THE
expression on her face. She was so shocked, her usual defenses weren’t in place, and her dismay was clear. He wasn’t used to having such a negative effect on someone he was trying to seduce—and, oh yes, he was trying to seduce her. She looked at him as if he’d stolen her favorite doll.

Maybe he’d gone too far last night, letting those erotic images loose, but even in sleep she had a choice. Either she opened her mind, her heart, her legs, or she rejected the wickedly insidious mind-play he’d initiated. And last night she’d welcomed him.

The tiny, cell-like room was faintly stuffy, and he moved to the window, pushing it open, letting the soft sea breeze into the room. He kept his body loose and relaxed, deceptively at ease. If she made
one move toward the door, he would be there ahead of her.

Fortunately, she was still frozen to the bed, which was exactly how he liked it. He turned to look at her, leaning against the windowsill.

“I need you to explain something to me, Miss Mary.” He deliberately misused her name, just to see the fleeting reaction in her changeable eyes. They looked more blue than green today, even though she still wore the boring white clothes. “You don’t seem to like me very much, and I wonder why. Did I kill your dog or something? Or is it because I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want you? Is it me you’re afraid of, or sex?”

He caught the nearly imperceptible jerk of her body, and he nodded. “Ah, so it’s sex. I wonder why. It can’t be Thomas’s fault—he was about as predatory as a rabbit. He certainly couldn’t have traumatized you in bed.”

He could sense her struggle to remain polite. “My relationship with my husband is none of your business. I loved him very much, and we were very happy. In
every
way.”

If it was none of his business, why had she told him that? He smiled, a slow, wicked smile. “Then you’ve probably had a vision about me and it’s a disastrous one. No, wait, that’s not possible, because I gather your visions are about as reliable as those of
a carnival fortune-teller. Or are you seeing different visions? Perhaps more personal ones?”

The expression on her face was priceless.

“You know, you really ought to learn to hide your reactions,” he continued, pushing away from the window and approaching the bed before she could scramble off it. “You practically telegraph them. Or no, people don’t use telegraphs anymore, do they? You practically e-mail them? Either way, they’re very clear.” He sat down on the bed, and she simply looked at him out of her big eyes, unable or unwilling to move away.

“Please,” she said in her small, determined voice. “Leave me alone. I have no idea why you’ve taken it into your mind to torment me, but I would think you’d find more suitable prey.”

He smiled at her lazily. “What an interesting turn of phrase. You think I’m a predator?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

She was practically vibrating with emotion. It wasn’t pure fear, he could sense that much. Fascinating. He leaned forward, resting his hands on either side of her, trapping her there, still not touching her. The bed was too narrow, and it was too soon, but she was so tempting, and their shared dream from last night had only added to his arousal. That soft mouth, those rampant curls, the uneasiness in her eyes that
he could soften and turn to heat and desire . . . He wondered how long it would take. He might time himself, just to see. Two days? Two hours?

“I don’t suppose I could convince you that I’m absolutely harmless?” he asked softly.

“No.”

“What exactly do you think I’m going to do with you, Miss Mary? I’m not the big bad wolf, you know.”

“And I’m no Little Red Riding Hood,” she shot back, starting to regain her fire.

“Then what are you so afraid of?”

For a moment he thought she was going to deny it. And then she blindsided him. “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt the Fallen, and you’re somehow going to use me to do it. I don’t know where I come into things, but I don’t trust anything about you.”

The pretty little mouse was more observant than he’d given her credit for. He smiled at her, all innocence. “You’re paranoid, you know that? Why would I want to hurt the Fallen? Oh, I expect you’ve heard rumors of my tragic past.” He put a light, ironic twist on the word
tragic
. “Each and every one of the Fallen has the same kind of tragedy in his history. And it
is
history—so long ago that time can’t even record it. It’s a little late to be holding a grudge. And why”—he leaned closer—“do you think I wouldn’t simply want to take you to bed for the sheer pleasure of it? Or are you afraid I’m going to shake up your safe little world?”

He could read truth in the sudden darkening of her eyes, and he wanted to laugh. She was almost too easy. It was too soon—he’d only been here thirty-six hours—but he couldn’t resist. “Look at me,” he said softly. “I’m going to kiss you. It won’t hurt, I promise. Just a sweet, safe little kiss, nothing more.” Her face was averted, as if staring at the wall would make him disappear. “Look at me, Martha,” he said again, forcing her to turn by sheer will. And then he covered her mouth with his.

He slammed back, off the bed, halfway across the room before he realized it and stopped himself. He stood there, staring at her in shocked disbelief.

She was looking even more shaken than he felt. She’d scrambled back into the farthest corner of the bed, her eyes so big they practically filled her gamine face, her body curled into a tight little ball.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded in a rough voice.

She said nothing, and that pissed him off even more. “Answer me.”

She flinched as if his voice were a blow, and he took a deep breath, giving her a moment as well. The moment his mouth touched hers, he’d seen it, felt it—power, pure and dangerous, tied up with an almost physical vision. The two of them, limbs entwining, mouths and hands on heated skin, sweat and sex, rolling on the bed. He’d been aroused since he’d
come into the room, but now he was so damned hard it hurt, and he could still feel it in his gut, the complete, raw sexuality of it, the bruising force of it, defying even his usual iron control.

Finally she spoke. “I’m a seer,” she said in a steady voice. “I get occasional flashes of the future, and they feel very real and physical. One might have been coming when you . . . you touched me.”

“When I kissed you.” And two were coming, he thought with dark humor. “I saw it too, and I’m not a seer. And it was more than the sex, delightful as it was. We both know that’s going to happen, and it’s not important enough to hold that kind of power.”

When he kissed a woman, he knew her soul. Knew her needs and fears and longings. It had served him well in the past, an immediate key to their bodies and beds. All he had to do was say the right thing, make the right gesture, and they would be his, body and blood. It had been almost too easy, and that was what he’d expected from the woman staring at him as if he were Uriel himself.

But he’d never felt anything like the bolt of power that had almost blown him off his feet when he’d kissed her.

“So did you see anything specific?” She sounded uneasy. So she’d seen the same thing, and didn’t want to admit to it.

He grinned at her. “Apart from you writhing
beneath me, me inside you as you were about to explode with pleasure? No, nothing at all.”

Her cheekbones were stained with color. “Wishful thinking on your part,” she dismissed it bravely, and he was momentarily impressed. She kept surprising him.

But then, that was part of the attraction. Every time he thought he had her figured out, she ended up startling him, charming him. And that wasn’t a good thing. “I don’t think so,” he drawled. “I think that you saw the same thing I did, felt the same thing I did. I think that if you weren’t wearing that loose top, I’d see that your nipples are hard in this warm room, and I’d find out you’re wet.” She squirmed just a little, confirming that suspicion.

“It wasn’t a vision,” she snapped. “That’s not how they happen.”

“Then what was it? And why did I feel it too? Why did it feel like I was blown off my feet?”

She stared at him, biting her lower lip, and he felt that in his cock as well. It should be his mouth biting her in all her soft places, ending with her sweet neck. “I don’t know.”

But she did. Or at least she suspected—he could see it in her eyes, sense it in the emotions that came off her body in waves. Fear and longing and rich, dark sensuality. And he needed to taste it again, to see if he could harness it, ride it out.

He started toward her, but this time she was fast, off the bed and to the door by the time he got there. He slammed it shut with the flat of his hand just as she managed to pull it partly open, and she leaned against it, her forehead pressed against the wood, trembling, as his arms trapped her there.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Martha,” he said softly. Because he wasn’t, at least not physically. He was good to his lovers, generous and inventive, and he would give her the kind of pleasure she clearly had never experienced. “Turn around.”

She didn’t move. A kind man would step back, let her escape, leave her alone. He’d never been kind, and he wasn’t a man. He was an avenging angel, heartless in his pursuit of justice. If Martha was collateral damage, so be it. At least he could give her exquisite pleasure before all hell broke loose.

He pulled his hands away from the door and put them on her shoulders gingerly. He could feel the tension vibrating through her, feel her barely banked emotion. He turned her, keeping his hands on her at all times, almost as if he feared static electricity. That would have been an easy explanation for what had happened—if static electricity felt like a lightning bolt.

He pushed her back against the door gently. “Let’s try this again,” he whispered. He took her stubborn chin in his hand, tilted her downturned face up to his, and kissed her again.

She tasted so damned sweet, he thought with a groan. Her lips were soft, vulnerable, and she didn’t think to tighten them before he managed to part them with the pressure of his mouth. He slid his other hand around her back, cradling her as he pushed his tongue into her mouth and tasted her more fully. The visions were back, but he managed to withstand them as they danced and swirled through her body into his and back again. He pulled her tight against him, and his infallible instincts told him he was right. Her nipples were hard, she was wet, and her hands had come up to his arms. Maybe she’d wanted to push him away, but instead she was clutching him, her fingers digging into his biceps, a tiny bit of pain that added to his arousal.