Chapter 16
C lara didn’t move. She wasn’t sure whether her joints locking up was out of fear of what those six tiny shimmering letters on Bronze’s skin represented or due to the plane of tense muscle supporting them. A damning heat prickled her skin, and she tried to avert her gaze. But where? She was practically lying on top of the male. Every corner her eye searched out only came away with more of that smooth, taut skin stretched over bounding muscles that jumped beneath her fingers every time she prodded a tender patch.
And tender it was. The slashes from the coyote bite that extended down his shoulder and over his collarbone weren’t particularly deep—or, at least, they weren’t any longer—but they left a precarious trail toward a tight disc of a nipple. One that seemed to tighten further beneath her labored breaths.
Somewhere between the travesty of the coyote’s cruel marks and the tempting treasure that kept a taut rein on her awareness lay the scrawling script of another female’s name.
Then the hot talons of mortification sank into her.
He had a sweetheart. Another female. True, they’d both made it clear that affection was not a factor in their agreement, but she’d never considered that the reason they hadn’t discussed it was because he already had a female who satisfied his needs in that regard.
The realization flooded fresh heat to her cheeks. Honestly, could you be more of a fool if you tried?
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” On weak arms, she pushed herself off the bed, already regretting that her shame shone clear as day on her face.
He grabbed her wrist and tugged gently. “No, it’s all right.”
Bronze sat up and shifted so he made space for her beside him. His tightly packed abdominals contracted beneath the weight of his hunched shoulders. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, and that strange flash of citrine sparked in his gaze. A gaze that was notably not directed at her.
“Polina was . . . a sister.”
“A sister?” The confession surprised her, though it shouldn’t have if she’d been better at following the threads of her most recent experiences more closely. After she awoke in the angels’ infirmary room, Bronze had formally introduced himself and the others. How had he referred to them? His brothers and extended family. So it shouldn’t be strange he also had a sister, right?
The realization should have been a comfort, but then why had her muscles ceased to relax?
“Before my brothers and I landed in the mortal realm, we resided in the Empyrean, Heaven’s highest realm, as I’ve mentioned before. The angels you’ve met at our den are all sentinels like me, except for Rhode. He was the seraphim commander in charge of the most elite intelligence unit but is a brother just the same.”
Clara nodded her understanding and was doing her best to stay focused. There were just so many words and phrases she’d never heard before. It was a hard-to-swallow pill of just how small her world had been her whole life and what she thought she could absurdly stumble into and maneuver unawares.
“I had a dear friend, Malik. He was a seraph in Rhode’s intelligence unit, but the male made for a shit spy. He knew it, I knew it, and so did everyone else. However, he’d learned he had other skills that lent themselves very well to the spy game.”
“Who were you spying on?”
“Cyro. The ruler of the demon charmers.”
“Demons?”
“Yeah. Soul-suckers who eradicate mortals like pests and have a huge hangup over the Empyrean’s Eternal Flame, which is the source of all light and life in the realms. Cyro can’t tolerate the stuff. He and his cronies—who can eat, sleep, have sex, and generally commingle with the rest of the human race so they assimilate more easily—can only reside in darkness. Any light whatsoever, be it celestial or solar, torches them out of existence. That’s why Cyro’s been trying to snuff out the root of his grudge for eons, and we’ve been doing our best to prevent it.”
“Demons,” she whispered to herself, trying to shake off the shock of it all. Then another horrid thought occurred to her. “Was Polina one of these demons?”
“No,” he quickly assured her. “No, Polina was . . .” His eyes got that faraway look to them again and seemed to dip lower under the weight of a past Clara was struggling to comprehend and dying to know more about. “She was Malik’s younger sister. A real brat and a half during her early years, but a truly sweet and wonderful female once maturity set in.”
“She sounds charming.”
A haunted smile ghosted his lips. “She was.”
Was.
By the blasted moon, had her brainless poking and prodding just drudged up the memory of a lost loved one? And there she’d gone and practically forced him to explain the woman’s name on his skin as if Clara had any right to the truth of it?
Her hot shame got to work, as usual, painting her a greater shade of idiot, so she did her best to quickly rally and change the subject. “You mentioned your friend had other skills.”
Thankfully, blessedly , Bronze took the bait, or perhaps he was just as eager to change the subject as she was. “Yes. The reason Malik didn’t excel in that branch of intelligence was because of an old battle injury that compromised his short-term memory. But while that portion of his mind was damaged, another portion was altered in a different manner. Some of his other senses grew tenfold, to the point where he could sense shadows on the ground long after their owners had left the area. I never quite understood it. None of us did, really. Something to do with an increased sensitivity to thermal temperatures and the auras they left behind. I don’t know. Whatever it was, though, it meant that Malik could detect when a charmer had been nearby.”
“Quite useful for a spy legion to know, I imagine.”
“Quite.”
Clara waited for him to continue, but her focus dipped slightly when he swallowed and candlelight rode the wave of his neck, highlighting the dusting of rebellious auburn hairs he hadn’t managed to shave as close as the others.
“After one particular mission, Malik detected a league of charmers who had inched too close to the Empyrean’s gates. But the energy was a bit off, for some reason. Not quite as strong as if they were still in the vicinity but not so weak that they hadn’t been there very recently. Malik had trouble placing the timing of things, so when he finally got around to reporting his observations to Rhode, his memory of what he sensed was no longer reliable. Furious with himself and determined to correct his mistake, he returned to the scene outside the gates. But by then, the charmers were waiting for him.”
Bronze idly traced the swirl of his tattoo over his chest. “I found him shortly after. He was still alive but they’d, uh”—he cleared his throat—“they’d hacked off his wings so he couldn’t return and report back. We’d learned that when Cyro found out about Malik’s ability, the demon ruler had his mystics, the magic users, craft a way to mask their thermal presence. It worked.”
“That’s . . . that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Clara grabbed his hand and held it to her chest, hoping to impart some sort of belated comfort for the memories she’d forced him to drag up.
Bronze followed the line of his arm, down his biceps, over the bend of his elbow, and up the ramp of his forearm where it ended in a warm bundle against her breasts. His stare was a heightened reminder of the male’s uncut measure, thrilling Clara to the point of confusion.
He’d never looked at her like that, and it was doing all sorts of funny things to her insides.
“Before he died, he made me promise to take care of Polina. In the Empyrean, oaths are sealed onto our skin as tattoos.”
“And what happened to her?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. In the days that followed Malik’s death, me and my brothers were called upon to enact the Sealing and close the gates of the Empyrean against Cyro’s advancing armies. The magic we used to complete the task cast us out of the realm. We’ve been here ever since.”
“You’ve never been able to return home?”
The slow shake of his head might as well have been an anvil on her chest. Did he feel it, too, then? The weight of expectation that might as well govern every moment of her life? She couldn’t take a step down a hallway or select an outfit without being reminded of the hands that scrubbed the stones beneath her feet or stitched up the seams of her blouse.
She had a responsibility to her people. In her father’s eyes, it was to mate and to breed. When she caught her people’s exhausted gazes, however, the responsibility felt like so much more and had nothing to do with who she invited into her bed.
Fleeing to the human lands and taking the steps to enact these silly games had been the only thing she could think of to live up to the weight of that responsibility.
But God, it had been so long, so long since she’d done anything for herself. Spontaneity had always been a flimsy fantasy, one reserved for those who had lighter hearts and less propensity for chaos staring down their future.
A future that threatened to be just as bleak as frigid river water should the games not go according to plan.
Without her realizing it, that familiar deep desperation had her clutching his hand tighter against her, and a sharp breath hissed into his lungs. But he didn’t pull his hand away. He just kept it there, relaxed and warm against her breasts, and when she loosened her fingers slightly to free him, he still didn’t remove his hand.
The sensation was altogether transfixing, as was the way his rigid pectorals rose and fell in a more labored fashion.
When on earth had the room gotten so small? Or his presence so big, so overwhelming?
So tempting.
Oh, yes. He was so very tempting. She could admit that now. Alone as they were, was it so bad that she wanted to be the object of his temptation as well?
By the Moon Mother, she was tired. So very tired of plotting and planning. And where had it gotten her? Dead nearly two times over, a father who was furious with her for poking holes in his reign, and an angel who?—
She didn’t remember doing it or how it happened, but somewhere between her last thought and her next breath, she’d moved Bronze’s hand higher, until the tips of his fingers settled within the shadowy curve between the tops of her breasts.
This male made her want so much more than she’d ever known she could have. Touches and tastes that, if nothing changed, she was liable to go an entire lifetime without ever experiencing fully.
Yes, she was foolish in many things, but she was also a female. A princess. A future monarch, Moon Mother willing.
And a viper.
She could choose when and how to strike. This male had taught her that when even her father thought to label her as nothing more than a common whore.
“Bronze,” she breathed, her sharp breath stealing more than her fair share of oxygen from the small room.
One more soft inhale was all the fortification she needed to close the gap between them and capture her prey with a hungry kiss.