Chapter Seventeen
Liss stared at the Christmas lights swagged on every house they passed. She hadn’t shopped yet. Wasn’t feeling anywhere close to festive. Aside from the night she and Maisy had binged Hallmark movies and decorated their house, she hadn’t done anything to prep for the holiday.
It wasn’t the possible impending apocalypse that wouldn’t let her flip the on switch for her Christmas spirit.
It was man trouble.
Zavier kept running hot and cold toward her. Much like he had the night they actually had sex—except more protracted. He drove her to and from work—for safety—and sometimes they talked and snarked like before. Sometimes they rode in complete silence. When they were in a group, he relaxed more around her. Touched her a little more. When they were alone, he was as cautious to keep a distance as if she had Ebola.
She wiggled a little in the blissfully heated seats of his SUV. Staying in the car and arguing seemed like a better plan than continuing to say nothing, live with the status quo, and heading out into the bitter cold.
Liss gave him one more shot at acting like the friends they’d been. “I thought we could do another movie night. Like we used to.”
“We’ve both got research to do.” Zavier didn’t even flick his gaze in her direction. And she knew that parallel parking didn’t take any concentration on his part—even with the packed snow that crusted over the spaces in front of her house.
“I picked one out. Clash of the Titans —the Liam Neeson version. You can make fun of all the mythological inaccuracies to your heart’s content. And we can officially call it research.”
“Probably not a good idea.”
“Why not?” Before he had a chance to scramble into a lie, she pressed on. “It feels like you’ve been avoiding me. Some of the time. When you’re not giving me awesomely thoughtful presents, like Lika. Which makes it even more confusing.”
“Can’t you just let things be?”
“Not so much.”
He got out of the car, slamming the door so hard that Lika squealed and leapt up from where he’d been soaking in the warmth of the footboards. Liss sighed and stroked his head. So much for staying in the car. Because if Zavier thought that walking away would stop her from pushing the issue? He was dumber than a bag of carrots.
Liss scooped Lika inside her coat, tightened her scarf, and headed into the icy December wind. As expected, Zavier hadn’t gone far. No matter how mad he got, he wouldn’t shirk his security duties. He stood at the porch steps, watching.
She was sick and tired of him just watching her. How did they go from being friends to lovers to…in limbo? Not anymore. Liss didn’t sit back and wait for life to deliver. She pounced on it and made it happen.
“You’re assigned to guard me, right?”
“Volunteered,” he said gruffly.
There it was again. A peek at what might really be roiling beneath all that dark hair. She stomped the snow off her feet before going inside. The bell on a strip of red velvet ribbon attached to the doorknob jingled. “Isn’t it hard to guard me when half the time you can’t even look at me?”
“I would look at you all day, every day, for the rest of my life,” he said in a low, intense tone.
Liss dropped her coat, his admission surprised her so much. “Then why the cold shoulder? Until you forgot whatever’s causing it and you’re so sweet and normal to me. Why , Zavier?”
He hung her coat. Then his own. And crouched to unlace his snowy boots.
Enraged by the silent treatment, she kicked off her own. “I’m not going to stop asking. You might as well save yourself some grief and just freaking talk to me now. Or else maybe we can’t be friends anymore.”
Looking up at her, his face was in shadow from the single overhead bulb in the entrance. It was a fitting visual metaphor. Zavier had once told her that’s how he felt. Compared to everyone else in the world. That he existed under the cloak of a dark shadow of pain and rage and bitterness.
Whereas she saw it more as an umbrella. He’d progressed to the point where he put it down much of the time. Until habit kicked it back overhead.
Liss, right now, was ready to do an entire cancan of kicks to help him keep it down.
Zavier pounded his sternum with his fist. “I’m fucking drowning in guilt, Liss. That makes it hard to talk.”
Guilt? That didn’t sound like it stemmed from memories of his time being imprisoned and tortured at all. “For what?”
His head dropped. “I did this to you.”
“What?”
“I turned you into a Nereid . I changed you. Gave you powers that you loathe. You must hate me. And I don’t want to risk getting to the moment when you let your guard down and that hatred shows in your eyes. I never want to see it. Selfish, I know, but that’s the truth.”
That was it?
That was the big reveal?
To Liss, the only thing he’d revealed was how much he cared for her. His emotional outburst was, well, the Zavier equivalent of a dozen roses and diamond studs.
She sank to her knees to be at his level. “I don’t hate you. Just the opposite,” she admitted. “I always wanted to be chosen. To not be left behind. To not be too much trouble to bother with. You risked everything for me. You chose me…to live.”
So slowly it was as if his neck vertebrae were being winched up, his head lifted. “You’re sure?”
Liss scraped her nails around his ears, at the edge of his hairline. Then her palms cradled his jaw. “I’m not mad. I’m not deeply harboring a need for retribution. I’m not even marginally peeved. I’m nothing but grateful for the choice you made to save me, Zavier.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
Was he that oblivious or that hopeless? “You’re not calling me a liar, are you? Because I will knee you in the balls before you have a chance to shield yourself with your wings.”
“I’m sure you would.”
The man spent far too much time in his head. Rehashing horrible memories. Overthinking. Liss intended to keep banging down the door and giving him a reason to come out.
She finger-walked down to his collarbone. Then over to where it joined his shoulder. “Do you remember how I convinced you to have sex with me? The first time?”
“The world might end soon?”
Liss stroked her chin. “Hmm. Catch me up if I’m wrong, but I think that’s still an urgent concern.”
“You want me to be a seat filler for the end of the world.”
He’d progressed from self-flagellation to bantering with her. Liss called it a win. “Ooh, very dirty double entendre, Senor Carranza.”
“I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I was trying to make a joke. And it backfired.”
“Wrong again. It brought double the punch.”
Zavier captured both her hands. His dark eyes drank her in with enough intensity that her skin almost felt burned where he’d raked his gaze across. “I’m…relieved you don’t hate me. But I’m still no good for you.”
Ohhhh this man insisted on taking the long way around. The hard way. Every time. If you couldn’t save a million dollars in a year, what was the use of putting away coins in a piggy bank? If you couldn’t lose ten pounds in a month, why diet?
And if you couldn’t be happy 24/7, why try at all? Liss pushed at his shoulder. “So what? Neither are donuts. But my life would be less rich and delicious without them.”
That sardonic near-smile lifted the corner of his lip a millimeter. “Now I’m a donut?”
“In that I want to lick you all over? You bet. Seriously, though? The mixed signals have got to stop. It’s just you not being honest to either one of us. We deserve honesty. So tell me, honestly, how you plan to move forward.”
His response tumbled out immediately. “I can’t help wanting you. I can’t stop wanting you. It’s not fair to you that I want you.” The words were so deep and rough, they might as well have been mined from the center of the earth with a diamond-tipped pitchfork.
“All’s fair in love and a near-apocalypse. Damn it, Zavier, why won’t you just let yourself be happy?”
“I…I don’t remember how.”
There . That was honesty. That , she could work with. “Let’s see what I can do to jog that memory.”
She flattened her palms against the rough nub of his black knitted sweater. Moved them, fully extended, thumbs touching, up and out as though that motion alone would open his heart.
Maybe his heart chakra?
Over and over again in a pattern that emulated the general shape of a Valentine’s heart.
Zavier stayed crouched, unblinking, and watching her.
Creepy, but she was used to it.
Liss could make him blink.
She leaned forward on her knees to brush her lips across his. Once. Twice. By the third pass, Zavier blinked.
By the fourth, he lunged for her.
Using that Nephilim super speed, he pushed her backward, flipped them, and landed with him on the floor and Liss pressed tight to his body.
He kissed her. Zavier took quick, greedy bites along her lips. He trapped her legs within the cradle of his. The feel of those thick thighs and firm calves tensed from ankle to hip absolutely melted Liss.
She couldn’t wait to feel the same thing, but naked .
Those hungry kisses continued in a line up to her eyebrow, back down, up to the outer corner of her other brow, and then over to the tip of her nose with a tenderness Liss hadn’t expected.
His hands, meanwhile, had already worked up under her sweater. Calluses from his swords and daggers scraped her skin.
Liss couldn’t get enough. Roughness didn’t matter. It was actually a turn-on. The same way his every-o-clock stubble abraded the thin skin at the notch of her collarbone as he pushed the scooped edge of her sweater to reveal her green and red plaid bra (okay, so she was a little bit festive).
The hilt of his ankle sheath dagger dug into her calf, but she didn’t intend to say a word. Or so much as blink. Zavier appeared to be mapping her body with his senses. She refused to do anything to stop him.
His legs rubbed up and down hers. His teeth had already moved her bra beneath her breast, and his lips had already moved to a circular path toward her nipple. Liss pressed up from her hands on his shoulders into a cobra yoga pose that gave him unimpeded access.
“Mmm, yes.” She arched her back even more. Thank goodness for Aradia’s dance classes making her more limber.
Liss felt the rumble in his chest before it emerged as a laugh. “Is there anything you’d say ‘no’ to?”
She looked down to see a devilish grin that youthened his face and smoothed the near-ubiquitous grim lines bracketing his eyes. Her heart lurched. This man…he freaking owned her with that smile. Lock, stock, and barrel.
Not that she’d tell him.
“With you? Doubtful. I trust you, remember? Both to keep me safe and alive, and to keep me at the highest possible peak of pleasure.”
“Some things are so obvious they don’t have to be stated.”
Liss adored it when Zavier was cocky and smug. That wouldn’t stop her from teasing him. “You really don’t have a shred of modesty, do you?”
“Why should I? I’m the best warrior in or out of the Order. It’s always been true. It was just definitively re-proven a few weeks ago. I’m a good cook, to make up for those months of subsisting on swill. I can maintain the perfect tension in a line of stitches more than a foot long on a gaping wound.” He bent his knees and threw them forward and up to standing in one glorious push of muscles. “And I’m about to re-prove my superior competency at bringing you to multiple orgasms.”
Why, why did it have to be winter? There were so many layers of clothes standing between them and sex. She shrugged—simple after Zavier’s rearranging—to send her sweater to her hips. Hooking her thumbs over it and her pants, she pushed everything down to her ankles.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving this show along.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t mean we’d do it here in the hallway.” The front walls were covered with coat hooks and a panoply of artwork from the previous owner’s travels. It’d be tough to find a blank square foot to lean against.
“Don’t rush me. I’ve been denying myself… you . Ignored the need. Batted away the memories of the night we spent together. It didn’t work. So now, I need to take my time.”
Liss’s mouth went dry. “Sure. No objections.”
With infuriating precision, he unlaced and loosened each boot. Eased them off. Then her socks. Zavier used his pinkie to draw sensual designs on the top of her feet. Her toes curled into the wood floor.
Putting a shoulder to her belly, Zavier picked her up in a fireman’s carry.
“What about my clothes?” Her ankles were still restrained.
“Just means you won’t fight me while we relocate.” His wings carried them straight up the stairs to Liss’s bedroom.
“Have I not made it perfectly clear that I’m all in for sex? That I don’t want to fight with you?”
“Aww, Liss, but we’re so good at sniping at each other. It’s our foreplay.”
“True.” He didn’t set her down by the bed, but on the edge of the jetted hot tub in the bathroom. “That’ll take forever to get hot,” she complained once he flicked on the taps full blast. The old house had equally old pipes and an on-its-last-legs water heater. Something she and Maisy planned to take care of once they, you know, forestalled the apocalypse.
“Leave it to me.” Zavier winked at her.
Winked!
Omigod, that was a devastating look on him. Playful. Confident. Sexy-as-fuck. Gideon winked all the time. She’d never seen Zavier do it, though.
Well, he wasn’t one to flaunt his extraordinary powers.
He eased the clothes off her ankles. Then he pulled one leg over his and pressed his knuckles in her arch. Hard.
“If you keep that up, I’m not sure I’ll need sex. I may come just from the foot rub.”
“Go ahead.” Another wink. “Have three orgasms before I get inside you. Watching you come will be worth it.”
Seriously ? Liss was wild about Zavier for his strength and snark, bravery and competitiveness, and the adorable way he went berserk for anything sugar-laden. But if she’d known he gave killer foot rubs—unprompted, no less!—she would’ve been head over heels for him from day one.
He pulled her other leg over and switched his ministrations. While he squeezed the sides of her foot, Zavier bent to lick at the side of her knee. Liss hurriedly braced herself.
Soon he had her leg lifted straight up as he scraped his teeth behind her knee. He extended both wings, wrapping them around her into a feathery cocoon that supported her as he continued to move his mouth along her inner thighs. The feathers teased sensation from her as much as his mouth did.
Liss…quivered. Everywhere. Tingles from the feathers raced along her back and arms and hips. Pulsing desire spread up from his lips. Her entire body was contracted in a cramp of pleasure.
Then he stopped. Everything. “Tub’s full.” Zavier picked her up.
No way. “It won’t be hot enough. Don’t be mean. Don’t—”
“Tsk. Trust me.” He stuck a single finger in the water. As she watched, steam began to coil up from the frothing bubbles. He added a second finger, to test. “Perfect.”
That trick the Nephilim had of channeling the elements—Maisy had told her about it, but she’d never witnessed it. “Can I call you for that next time my windshield needs to be de-iced?”
“You can still think about your car? Now? I must not be trying hard enough.” Zavier placed her in the tub. The all-over hit of heat was shocking and arousing.
Even more so as she watched Zavier strip. Beneath the dark hair, his skin had a deep tan from the hours spent under the desert sun at the tournament. It helped burnish the peaks and valleys of his ripped muscles. A thin arrow of hair led from his navel down to his already thrusting cock.
Make that his magnificent cock. Long, thick, with a noticeable vein straining against the skin she remembered to be so velvety. And since he was right there, she boosted her arms over the edge of the tub so she could feel it.
He jerked.
Not just his cock—his whole body. Liss used her nails to tease his taut balls while she wrapped her mouth around him. Only made it two-thirds of the way down, due to that wonderful length, but Zavier didn’t seem to mind. She used her hand to close the gap. Squeezed rhythmically, with tiny tugs up and down, while gently scraping her teeth across the tip.
Zavier almost bucked all the way out of her mouth at that.
“Let me get in, Liss.”
“I’ve been hoping you’d say that.”
Zavier groaned at the double entendre as he rolled on a condom. “You are mouthy.”
“Which you enjoyed tremendously thirty seconds ago.”
He sank into the tub. Raised an eyebrow at the bubbles erupting around her. “You’re hogging a jet, aren’t you?”
“Had to keep myself entertained while you were setting the Guinness World Record for slowest undressing ever.”
Hauling her across his lap, Zavier said, “I told you to trust how I’d unroll this night. Anticipation’s as effective as touching at some points.”
Liss closed her eyes at the blissful sensation of his leg hairs rubbing against her inner thighs. The heat that had suffused the outside of her body was now replicating that movement on the inside, with every small roll of his hips that brought them together.
He adjusted their position so that her nipples ducked in and out of the water at each movement.
She’d had about enough of this teasing. Liss gambled on one thing being able to move them along. “Look at me, Zavier.” His gaze, which had been very fixed on her breasts, switched up. There was no shielding in it. No backdrop of bitterness. Just an open curiosity dripping in naked lust. “I could never hate you. Mad, sure. You can be infuriating. But what’s between us is easy. It clicks. I felt that even before you saved my life. I’m… comfortable with you.”
Sure enough, that single word—despite being surrounded by compliments—narrowed his eyes and spurred him into action. “Comfortable? Hell, no. That’s not even my low bar. I’ll show you how you’re never settling for comfortable with me.”
Zavier stood. He pushed Liss backward until she floated in the water. A wing folded underneath her for support as he squeezed her ass to keep her vagina just above the water line.
Then he eased in.
Not super slow. Not a fast plunge. Just…smoothly. As if they were interlocking pieces. Just a steady, unending loop of stroking in and out.
The position—with her hips canted up a bit—sent him deeper than before. Liss grabbed for his wrists, his thighs, then finally settled on white-knuckling his hips. A climax built in her like never before.
Zavier plucked at her nipple with his teeth. A scream tore out of her. The slap of their bodies was barely audible over the jets, but oh, Liss felt it.
She felt every heavy connection of his balls to her butt.
The hard flexing of his thighs.
It was all good. An entire swelling chorus of sensations on every nerve in her body.
Steam dripped a strand of hair over Zavier’s forehead, making him look even more boyish and sexy. The rhythm picked up. She scraped her nails down his chest, which ripped a guttural moan from him.
His wings lifted her already arching back higher. He sucked at her breast, licking and scraping and working his tongue in flickering motions that pulsed more wetness between her legs. Liss opened her eyes to see his locked on her.
Intense.
But warm. And a little…wondrous. Like Zavier was as blown away by how good it was as Liss.
All her muscles tightened.
“Now?” he asked, driving inside her even harder.
“Yes. Yes.” Then her word melted into a soundless scream as everything exploded.
As they both jolted with aftershocks, Zavier eased her back into the hot water. “That went well.”
“Did you have doubts? Or do you want a high five.”
“More like I’m…cementing the memory.” Zavier pulled her against his chest. “It was good. Exceptional. And right now, I’m happy.”
“Mission accomplished.” Yep. Liss was smug. Pretty darn happy herself. Both at the orgasm and Zavier’s good mood.
“How about I thank you by doing it again? In bed, next time.”
Make that a playful good mood. Even better. The temptation to blurt out how she felt about him was overwhelming.
Instead, Liss crinkled her nose. Fell back on their established pattern of banter. Emotionless banter. “A bed? Sooo pedestrian. I was hoping for more of that wing action. That was spectacular.”
“Glad you noticed. Noticed that powers can be good.”
Liss thrashed a little until she managed to contort sideways to glare at him. The absolute nerve ! “Are you really starting in on me using my Nereid powers before our pulses are even back to normal? Are you using sex to sweet talk me into going full Nereid?”
“I’m not good at subtle. It’s a waste of time.”
Actually, she respected that. Brutal honesty worked for them. “Okay. Then say what you want to say so we can get back to having all the sex.”
“You believe that singing will turn you evil.”
“Eventually, yes. First, I’ll become selfish—but worse, with superhuman power attached to escalate things. Then it’ll morph, thanks to my continually using the power, into evil.”
“But your parents are only human. Small, petty, selfish—which has nothing to do with their singing careers. If they were plumbers, they’d be the same way. These people ignored their daughter again and again. They ignored the gift they brought into the world. A gift my mother would’ve done anything to be able to keep and nurture and love.”
“I’m so sorry about that.”
“There’s no changing the past. Singing didn’t ruin your parents. They’re just shitty people. The world’s full of a lot of ’em. But you aren’t one of them.”
He made it sound so simple. Letting logic override her fear. “You think I can just turn off this fear? Ignore all the bad I might do?”
“It’s what you’re asking me to do.”
“Not even close.”
“You don’t want to use your power because it’ll ruin you. I don’t want to be with you because I’ll ruin you. Ruin your spirit, your joy, with my darkness. It’s the same thing, Liss. If you expect me to try? You have to do the same.”
Damn it.
Zavier was a little bit right. They were both fighting their own types of demons. But Liss was still so scared, despite the fabulous orgasm and his detailed pep talk.
“I promise that I hear you. There’s no switch to flick in my brain, though. This requires deep mulling.” She flipped over, like a dolphin, and straddled him. “For now, let’s resume other deep activities.”
Liss didn’t want to use her powers and turn into so much as a shadow of her parents. Not if it took one time or seven hundred times.
It might help save the world, but she’d lose herself. Because absolute power could corrupt absolutely.