She tugged on the cellar door, whose padlock had long ago broken, leaving a rattling, rusty chain. Jonah helped her pull it open. The creak of the hinges was like the groan of an old man's bones, and the odor that drifted up was of trapped air, damp cement . . . and something else.
He studied the dark interior. "Something's down there."
"Unfriendly?" She turned serious eyes on him.
"Not dangerous," he responded cryptically. Putting out a hand so he could precede her, he took the top two steps down.
Jonah studied the shape of the darkness. It was not a large area, though roomy enough for two people to spend the night. Or more. And it was cooler, being belowground.
"We mean no harm if you cause us none," he said firmly. "May we share your cellar?"
There was a shifting, then the darkness moved. Anna drew in a breath, at his shoulder now.
"An earth spirit. A cellar dweller. I didn't know they still exist."
He was surprised she knew what he was seeing, but then his little mermaid was constantly surprising him.
"They do, but it's unusual to see them close to active human habitation anymore."
There was a chitter, and then the shadow became still again, as if there was nothing there at all and they'd imagined it. But now that Anna was looking where Jonah was, she saw it, the brief gleam of eyes. "Oh," she breathed softly, and the tiny slits of light became defined small orbs. The shadow moved forward a few inches.
"I've never met a cellar dweller," she admitted.
Another chitter. "They prefer cellar inhabitants. They feel the rhyming is undignified," Jonah said dryly.
Anna cocked her head. "You understand him?"
"Of course."
She smiled. "Do you understand all languages, my lord?"
He considered that. "In a sense. Angels don't hear the words, exactly, just the meaning. It's why you can't deceive an angel for long. We hear the lie in the tone. It's like listening to a piano concerto, and hearing how all the individual notes make the whole have meaning. So whether you speak or he speaks, I understand what you're saying."
"So that's how you speak any language."
He nodded. "I can communicate through the method of speech of whoever is speaking."
"So what you just said to him, he heard in his language, even as I heard it in mine? Then it's not necessarily that you know a million languages; you just hear everything's meaning, not the words." She gave him an impish smile as she slid around him. "You're not as clever as I thought you were."
He caught her arm, keeping her close, and gave her a mock admonishing look. "I can also block your understanding of what I'm saying to him and his of what I'm saying to you. So I can tell him you're likely to be trouble and he should chase you away."
"Of the two of us, I think he seems more concerned about you."
"I think he particularly likes your voice," Jonah agreed with some amusement, watching the creature come out farther as she spoke.
"Should I sing to him to calm him?"
"Well, if I do it, he'll die of fright." He loosened his grip, albeit reluctantly. "He doesn't necessarily mean us harm, but he's unsure of us yet. Take it slow."
Nodding, she began to hum. The creature studied her, eyes bright, then rose on hind legs, swaying to the tune. It gave her a sense of his form, which reminded her somewhat of a hairless, slender bear or an oversized ferret. His skin appeared to have a soft, rubbery appearance. She sang to him of reassurance, that they meant no harm, and infused it with calming magic. When she was done, he was settled back comfortably in his shadowy corner, watching them, but now with more curiosity than anything else.
As she sang, Jonah prowled around the cellar. There was ample room for his wings, which he liked, but there wasn't much in the way of a comfortable bed for Anna. Anna assumed they would just make the best of it, but he wanted her to have a deep sleep.
There was an old bookcase in the corner, suggesting this cabin had been a more permanent habitation for someone in the last twenty years, perhaps a researcher studying the volcanic history, and he'd brought out the bookcase to hold tools or water stores.
Lifting out the shelves, Jonah laid the piece of furniture on its back on the floor, blowing out the dust with a puff of enhanced breath. He lifted his head and sent another puff her way, making her giggle as it rippled through her hair and across the front of her T-shirt, making the angel cartoon on it shimmer comically, its wings fluttering.
"Tired?" he asked. Anna shrugged.
"A little." She was fatigued, but now that night was descending, she needed his closeness more than sleep. It was something she couldn't explain, but there was no way she was going to give in to her weariness before she could grasp that closeness, pull it into her, pull him into her. The physical proof that she wasn't alone, that he was here and that she was doing what she was meant to do. Moistening her lips, she drew his gaze there. As he registered her desire, flame flashed in his eyes, kindling the same heat in her lower belly as well. The fact she was getting weaker and wouldn't be able to hide it from him much longer hit her anew, increasing the yearning as well as the heat.
"Come here, then."
When she got to him, he lifted her T-shirt over her head. Slowly, making her feel the heavy weight of her arms as she lifted them over her head and then let them drop, her palms on his broad, bare shoulders. Staying there, she kept her fingertips in his feathers as he slid the loose cotton shorts and panties down her legs, worked off her sneakers and socks, letting her hold on to him. She watched as he put the pair of shoes off to the side, lined up next to each other. One long finger whispered over them in a way that made her toes curl into the ground as if he'd touched them instead.
"Such small feet."
A quiet chitter, and one seven-toed, clawed foot extended out of the shadows and drew a shoe
into the darkness. "Do not eat that," Jonah admonished. "She has to wear those tomorrow."
He looked back up at her, him on one knee as she stood, and she ran her fingers along the strong planes of his face, through his hair. "Goddess, you are so beautiful," she murmured.
His eyes, already so dark, deepened into obsidian as he turned his head to kiss her wrist, nuzzle her hand. When he rose and lifted her by the waist to touch her breast with his lips, it made her breath leave her. He held her that way, with effortless strength, showing that his wings might not be capable of bearing her additional weight, but his arms were another matter. Her toes curled again as he put his mouth over her nipple, including some of the tender breast flesh in the moist heat. Suckling her deep, he sent liquid tendrils spreading out from her belly through the rest of her vital organs as if a living creature were unfurling inside of her, primal and needy, and perhaps it was.
With some effort she brought her legs up and around his hips, which brought her in closer. Obliging, he cupped his hands under her bottom, moving them toward their makeshift bed. He stepped in it, sure-footed. Heat shimmered through him and then . . .
Her eyes opened wide when his wings tucked in close to him, and all his feathers released at once, dropping as a heavy, pillowy mass into the frame of the bookcase.
Anna gasped, watching the smaller feathers float back up from the impact, landing in her hair or lightly tickling against her skin.
"Oh," she said, amazed. "You did mean to do that, right?"
Jonah smiled, mysterious and sensual, his mind apparently on things that didn't encourage conversation, increasing the longing within her exponentially. Lowering them into the bed he'd created for her, he put her beneath him. Arching his denuded wings over them like the sleek branches of a black tree of bone, he displayed the intricate, delicate network capable of carrying him powerfully through the air when layered with feathers.
She lifted her chin as his fists curled into her hair and he took command of her throat with his mouth. The touch of his lips on that sensitive area was enough to arch her up into him as if she'd been shocked by a delicious burst of heat lightning. It was the perfect angle for him to slide into her body.
His charged silence, everything conveyed through the heat of his wholly dark eyes, the passionate grip of his hands, the urgent movement of his body between her thighs, spreading her open wider, had more impact than a stream of seductive words. She didn't feel like some nymph or woman he'd seduced in the past. He considered her his, someone who meshed with his body so easily and completely, it was bringing together two halves that already fit, no adjustment or conversation necessary.