A Mermaid s Kiss (Daughters of Arianne 1)

"No--you didn't."

"Well, it was during a time when it was mostly women escaping hard circumstances or who'd been confined there by husbands or fathers who wanted to be rid of them, so it wasn't as if their vows were a calling. And of course, we were servants of God. In a sense. Ronin was the one who came up with the idea." He said it with amused defensiveness and then she saw his eyes darken at the memory. When she pressed her fingers into his skin, he looked down at her hand, the shadows clearing somewhat.

"By the Goddess, they were so hungry for a man's touch . . ." He focused on where her hand clutched the front of his shirt. "As women who are not permitted physical contact often are."

When she would have drawn away, he simply held her closer.

"You loved him very much," she said into his chest. "When did he . . ."

"About two years ago." At her surprised look, he shook his head. "Time doesn't mean much to an angel, little one. And yet it can be more interminable to us than those with less."

"Yet you remember so many things, so many details."

"Not as many as I expected. I'd forgotten how delicate the inside of a shell is, how sweet a flower lying against a woman's flesh smells." Bending his head, he inhaled beneath her ear, making her shiver, her body feeling so warm in the embrace of his.

His proximity helped her keep her mind off of her back, but the damage and the swimming with the children had sapped her energy, nonetheless. As she listened to his human heartbeat, noting it sounded not much different than an angel's, she let the rock of the truck, the rhythmic sound of the breaks in the asphalt bumping under the wheels, relax her. Enjoying his touch, she imagined she was one of the water nymphs, surrounded by a laughing group of angels, tall, beautiful men including Jonah, their hands gentle, their desire fierce. The energy was so strong it became a large pair of wings in her mind, enfolding her in the scene of that painting forever. It was easy to doze, turn it into a dream where she was still close to the water, not getting farther from it.

"Great Goddess, that's frightening."

She opened her eyes in time to see a passing battered-looking van garishly covered with painted flowers. It was speeding along like a fugitive from the 1960s, trying to stay ahead of the grasp of time that might yank it back into its proper decade.

"It's very colorful." She smiled against his chest.

"Do you ever say anything negative about anything?"

"Not about things like that." She yawned. "They liked it enough to do it. If they see me making fun of it, it's like I'm somehow destroying what makes them feel good, chipping away at it. Their joy in it becomes a little less."

When she tilted up her chin to look at him with sleepy eyes, she found him gazing quizzically at her. "My lord?"

"It has been a while since I've been properly chastised, little one. I'm adjusting to the shock of you being right."

She grinned into his shirt, succumbing to sleep with his chuckle tucked warmly around her mind.

Jonah held her over the next hour, watching her fitful rest. He could tell her back was making her uncomfortable, but she'd made not one complaint. The wife of the migrant worker occasionally glanced back at him, her arm around her son, and she smiled, apparently moved by the picture they made.

He didn't like to think how good it felt, to simply hold her. How he wanted to just keep rolling along this highway forever with no destination. He wondered what it would be like to pick fruit or do whatever job the migrant worker was headed toward.

It was astounding, watching the world go by like this. Vehicles passing in different directions, a group of deer grazing on the side of the road, flirting dangerously near traffic. Endless numbers of cell towers, exit signs tempting motorists with fast food, gas. A group of girls in a sports car went by and gave him an open appraisal, casting flirtatious looks that turned harmlessly envious when they registered the sleeping woman in his arms.

The silky head of a smaller boy now emerged up front, large dark eyes blinking at Jonah. Like his mermaid, he'd apparently been sleeping.

"Mano!" The mother's sharp admonishment came too late, for the small boy had already wriggled halfway out the cab's back window, tumbling onto the mattress and sprawling across Anna and Jonah's legs with an unrepentant grin.

"Esta bien." Nodding to the mother, Jonah hauled the boy up on his other thigh to keep a firm hand around the small body, making it clear he'd be fine until he was ready to return to his exasperated mother.

Anna opened her eyes at the jostling, blinked at the boy. He reached out, touched her face and laughed. He had a marker in the other hand, and while she sat docilely, he drew a tiny, somewhat crooked smiley face on her cheek. Then he considered Jonah.

"I am not a wall for graffiti," he informed the dark-eyed child, who smiled and began to draw on him anyway.

"You don't dislike human children." Her voice was a quiet murmur into his chest.

"Of course not. The young are new . . . no matter what they might become, what soul they're carrying. Until they discover self-awareness, they're pure, unsullied." He glanced down, studied her face. "Are you all right?"

Anna nodded. She'd started awake from a bad dream. Jonah, in a dark, tumultuous sky, his red studded battle skirt matched the red of the blood dripping over his shoulders, streaming across his skin from the bodies he'd vanquished. His eyes fierce, deadly . . . empty. He'd been magnificent, fearsome . . . disconnected from her, from everything but that turmoil. She'd been afraid that he would not recognize her when his sword turned in her direction.

It was an abrupt but welcome transition to wake from that to an innocent child drawing. Leaning forward, she touched the image Mano had drawn high on Jonah's chest. A stick figure with wings and a halo. "Angel," the boy pronounced in Spanish.

She'd never noticed the Spanish pronunciation made the last syllable into "Hell." She shivered, recalling Jonah's words, that the earliest references to angels called them demons.

Sitting up, she sought his face, needing to see him. She even reached out with her fingertips to touch his lips, see the response to her in his eyes. Jonah. Angel. Servant of the Goddess.

"Bad dream, little one?"

He saw far too much, of course. But when she nodded, he brought her closer, putting his lips over hers as the little boy was held between them. Then Jonah deepened the kiss, tasting her mouth, teasing her until the dream began to melt into something different.

"You've had a brush with the Dark Ones," he murmured. "Don't let them chase you in your dreams. I'll chase them out for you."

She wanted that to be true, but she was also afraid for him. Despite his bumping along in an old pickup truck in such mundane surroundings, he looked as if there should be voices raised in heavenly song limning his every movement. Wouldn't he laugh at that thought?

But not songs composed with gentle harps. Instead, fierce battle songs beaten out on Celtic drums, foretelling the forces of good triumphing over evil. She held on to that thought, even as the darkness of the dream made her shiver, made his eyes turn back to her in concern and his arms tighten around her again.

Thirteen

THE Hispanic father dropped them in a small town just over the Nevada border. After purchasing some food and making an inquiry, Anna took Jonah to a large park that closed at sundown. However, without a car, they slipped in during the late afternoon without notice, losing themselves in the woods and looking for the creek she'd been told would be there.

It was approaching twilight. Nevertheless, Jonah muttered a vile curse as he stumbled over a root, and Anna reached out to steady him.

"We were in the truck a long while," she observed. "It's hard to get your land legs back. Particularly when you didn't quite have them to begin with."

"I'm a clumsy oaf without my wings and you're trying to be kind. How did you do it?"

"Do what, my lord?"

"Learn to be graceful, switching so often between fins and feet."

"Oh." She was amused at the descri