He cocked his head, his gaze darkening. Reaching down, still holding her about the waist, he brushed the cloak back to see her side, the indentation of waist, the curve of the one breast. Mina wanted to thrust away at this unexpected and gallingly intimate examination of her person, but somehow couldn't as his fingers traced that curve, the tiny jabs and long crescent scar she'd made one night, imagining the dagger's tip was his finger, even as the pain tingled through her nerve endings.
His attention lifted back to her face. At the same time, he picked up his dagger again, his fingers wrapping around the ridged hilt in a way that made the needy flesh of her sex thicken, her breath come short.
"This is my dagger. Mine. Only I may wield it. You understand? You may keep it, but if you want me to use it, on you, like this"-his gaze flicked to her arm and then back to her face-"you need to ask. All right?"
She stared at him in stunned silence. Surely he didn't... but yes, he did. She couldn't answer except for the jerky nod, the whisper that slipped through her lips.
"Please... use it."
Her attention latched onto his firm lips, the way they pressed together as he lifted her arm higher, making the cloak fall back so her side was exposed again. Positioning the tip of the knife, he drew it down, bisecting five of the old scars on her arm, creating a shallow line from which blood welled up and began to work its way down to the underside of her arm, like serpents merging together for a common destination.
She'd stopped breathing. Vaguely, she was aware her body leaned into his, and that his sex had become hard as a rock against her thigh. But still, there was no wildness to him, no unpredictable violence. In fact, everything he'd done was quiet, powerful, controlled. For the first time in her life, she felt caught in someone else's spell where she wasn't afraid. Not exactly. She was just feeling.
David bent, the hand with the dagger coming around so he could grasp her hair; the long raven thickness of it softly billowed in the current. The hilt of the weapon pressed against her nape. Her hair had been mostly unaffected on her scarred side. There was one streak of bare skull that arced back from her temple, revealing four or five inches of flesh, the ruined shell of the one ear, but her hair was so thick that she could draw it up to cover it, if she so chose. She liked the feel of his hands in it, too much.
Pressing his lips to the cut he'd made, he licked it, taking away the blood. Maybe he was putting his mouth on her to soothe, to cleanse, but the movement of his lips on her skin, the firm, suckling pressure, the way his fingers held her wrist in a sure, unshakable grip, the hard power of his body, the pressure of his cock against her leg, made it impossible for her to react in a tranquil manner.
Wrapping her arm around the breadth of his back, she dug her nails in. When his own arm tightened around her, she sank her teeth into his chest, the muscular part of his pectoral above a tight brown nipple. Curling her fingers into the diagonal strap of his weapons harness gave her better leverage and she bit harder. The accelerating drum of his heart called to her.
She half expected him to thrust her off him, but instead the strength of his arms increased, giving her permission to indulge her need to taste him, feel the purity of his blood in her mouth. That ethereal blue angel's blood was tinged with the metallic flavor of the human he used to be, so it didn't scald her mouth, at least not past the point of bearing. As she savored them both, she realized she was shamelessly rubbing her body against him as she succored herself on that taste. She was acting no better than a beast. Beauty and the beast...
She lifted her head then, her body stilling. David turned his head, meeting her eye to eye. There was a fierceness there, a delicious danger, and she wondered if his warrior instinct had been roused by her in an unexpected way.
But she thought of what he must be seeing. Half-scarred face, fangs now exposed, revealing her heritage, and she was sure her one red eye was flaming with barely restrained violence. His blood, on her mouth.
She couldn't tell what he was thinking. Pity? Revulsion? He should have thrust her away in disgust by now, for she was emanating the Dark Ones' aura. Why wasn't he? Why was he even here?
"You're here to replace Marcellus." It should have been obvious. Curling her lips back in a snarl, she shoved away from him, retreating several lengths. "Jonah decided, because we worked together before, that you might have a chance of managing me where all the others have failed."
There was just a flicker in his eyes, but it was enough. "I asked to come."
"Really? Did you beg? 'Please, pretty please, let me protect the Dark Spawn.' I've told all of them. I'm telling you. I don't want you here. Go away."
To her mortification, he brought the dagger close to his nose and inhaled. Though surrounded by water, she knew that didn't hamper his senses in the least. All angels were keen trackers.
The fire in his eyes made her lower belly clutch, particularly when he took an experimental taste, a bare brush of his tongue done with the thoughtful expression of a hunter testing the musk his prey had left behind. "Your scent has lingered, Mina. A peculiar phenomenon underwater. I don't think you mind so much that I'm here. But whether you do or not, I'm staying."
He sheathed it, gave her a formidable look she wouldn't have expected from him, except she'd seen him in battle before. "The Dark Ones want you. To torment, to use. Jonah won't permit that, for his own reasons. I won't permit that, either, for a different reason. Whatever it takes, I'll protect you."
"You realize if you're killed, I'll feel nothing?" She assumed an impassive expression, shutting him out, shutting it all out. "When the other four angels died, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. Their death cries were just an annoyance, a disruption."
He moved closer to her, this time using his wings to bring him up the ten feet or so she'd drifted away. It was an effort not to move back, particularly when he hovered, his wings blanketing her, giving her an odd sense of being surrounded.
"You feel, Mina. In fact, you feel so much you keep finding ways to let some of it out so it doesn't drive you mad." Lifting her hand, he studied the scars again. "I'm sticking. And if I die"-a slight smile touched his firm lips, a ghost of reaction before it was gone-"I'll demand that you shed at least one tear, even if you have to pinch yourself really hard and pretend that it's for me."
If only he hadn't been human.
It made him different in the way he dealt with her, harder for her to resist. For one thing, his presence didn't set off the maddening roar in her blood the way prolonged exposure to the other angels did. She even suspected the headache brewing behind her eyes was due more to his persistence than her blood's typical reaction to those born in the realms of the heavenly host.
"How did you die?"
Something flickered in the depths of his brown eyes. "Suicide, when I was fourteen."
That startled her, but she pushed past it. "So you're carrying your self-destructive tendencies into the afterlife?"
A wry smile appeared on his face. "I guess I opened myself up for that one. I thought Anna told you."
"I have no reason to speak to Anna about you," she said cuttingly. Though Anna had certainly talked enough about him, even when Mina put her hands over her ears and started imitating the mating calls of whales to get her to shut up. "And I like my solitude. You'll be in my way."
"Being dead or tortured at the hands of Dark Ones is preferable to enduring company?"
"Infinitely."
David's lips twitched, but he shifted forward, making her that much more aware of his proximity. She was floating at an almost forty-five degree angle now, nearly horizontal, with him looming over her. "Well, I don't prefer it. I won't be a nuisance to you, Mina. I don't require conversation. Angels spend a great deal of their time in meditation. I can find you food, and I'm willing to help you with whatever daily tasks you perform. Whatever it is that seawitches do."
She backed away. "I don't want your help, and if you insist, I'll just disappear and you'll have to find me again."
"You won't shake me, Mina. We share blood, remember?" Before she could get too far, he reached out, grasped her arm, the heat of his palm closing over her marble-cold flesh. "Get used to me being here."