A Witch's Beauty Read online

  She focused on his weapons harness, a crisscross of straps across his chest that held his daggers in front, as well as some concealed beneath his wings in back. Her fingers tightened on the grip of the dagger under her cloak's concealing folds. But that was a mistake, for it reminded her of the nights, maybe just one or two, when she'd run the dagger over her body, feeling the wicked edge of the blade leave thin lines across her skin. Taking it down, down, so the pommel and those metal grooves beneath it teased her sex. She'd wanted to push it all the way in, but had been held back by her own uncertainty and a longing so great it had frightened her. So she'd shoved it in, defying her own fear.

  She'd writhed around the thickness of it, her muscles milking those wonderful ridges, unable to stop the undulation of her hips as her body built higher and higher. Moving toward something she couldn't imagine, even as she couldn't stop imagining his hands holding her, pinning her, the weight of his body over her as he prepared to drive an entirely different type of dagger into her.

  The tip had slashed her thighs on both sides from her movements, a pattern reflecting the needy gyrations of her lower body. She'd envisioned tumbling in his wings, tangled in her cloak, a chaotic yin and yang with no balance to it.

  Returning to the present, she noted how the water molded the kilt against him in his forward progress such that she saw hints of the male sex organs beneath the fabric, a curve, a shadow. Then there was the ripple along his waistline, the diagonal muscles flowing down beneath the belted tunic, which stopped at mid-thigh. Just below a tight, firm ass. His thighs and calves showed the same battle-conditioned strength as his upper torso. But while he had the well-muscled arms, the defined chest, the striated abdomen, he was slim. His shoulders were pleasingly formed but not broad as a mountain, either. Maybe just the right breadth for letting a female lean on him, pillow a cheek close to his heart.

  There it was again, that tug at something within her whenever she looked at him, as if she'd been enveloped by a warm current of water, interrupting the usual cold. Hades, she'd been infected by Anna's newly mated romantic drivel.

  He was still a fledgling in the Legion's ranks, so his wings were ivory, with shades of pale brown in the primary feathers. Until he was fifty, they wouldn't know what his matured pattern and feather color would be.

  His face, like his body, was lean, nothing wasted, etched perfection. She saw the bone structure, the fair line of the forehead, severe shape of cheekbones, resolute chin, firmly held lips. Brown hair to his shoulders, streaked with chestnut.

  But it was those eyes that could rivet. She suspected whoever had created him had crafted his whole face specifically as a frame for those warm, syrupy brown eyes. Anna had described syrup to her, the way sunlight coming through a window could catch the flow as it poured out of the bottle onto things called pancakes. The sun would make it sparkle with pleasing hues, from amber gold to a vibrant, warm earth tone. Colors of peace, rest.

  For twenty-nine years, Mina had survived in a world that wanted her dead. She knew how to read intent, purpose, from miles away. She knew almost everything about the nature of mermaids, humans, the variety of sea creatures. Everything she did was about survival or the accumulation of knowledge, one supporting the other. She'd salvaged books from these very wrecks and others to learn even more. It was one of the many talents her mother had taught her, restoring and protecting paper words beneath the weight of the water, handling the pages delicately so as not to tear them, creating a magic filter in a piece of glass and passing it over text to translate it, no matter the language. As a result, she'd been able to teach herself to read several of those languages without the filter.

  Hades, come to that, even the angels weren't that difficult to read, though it didn't make them any less of a threat. Anna... Yes, she did understand Anna, though she didn't necessarily understand her own reaction to the mermaid who foolishly refused to consider Mina anything but a friend. Anna still stubbornly sought her out about once a week to impose a visit upon her, if Mina couldn't evade her.

  But she couldn't read David. She couldn't fathom everything going on in those deep brown eyes. Maybe that was why he fascinated her to the point of utter stupidity.

  She had three modes of existence. Run, kill, or defend herself in whatever manner was necessary. She just wasn't sure she knew how to defend herself against David, but of course she found herself too proud to run from him. An odd reaction for her, a witch who'd never let pride take the upper hand when it came to her survival.

  There was always the other mode. Her hand tightened on the dagger as he got closer. He didn't know she had it. If he got close enough, she could do it.

  Even as she had that thought, she vainly reached to pull it back. She knew better than to open that gate. The bloodlust roared up. It poured into her, heated her skin, tightened in her chest like her closed fist. One movement that he wouldn't expect, and that dagger could sink into his heart. He was a fledgling; it was his own weapon and the angel's heart was the key organ. She might not kill him, but she'd make him vulnerable enough that she could follow it up with a killing blow. Or she could take his heart, make him do her bidding. She had the power to do it...

  No. The world around her started to reel. The roar in her head became that high-pitched shrieking, the call of the flock. Her lips trembled open, eager to emit the piercing call in response, take her place among them, find their kinship. Her fingers were elongating into sharp talons, starting to overlap the grip of the dagger. The skin stretched tight over her face, her bones in danger of splitting through the thin layer and showing her true nature.

  Back up, back up. Her long tentacles used their sensitive feelers to take her swiftly back over the coral until she was in her concealed nest. Knowing he'd already pinpointed her location, she hoped it would buy her time to either strike or flee. Or make his blood run over her hands.

  No. That wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to taste his flesh on her tongue, dig her nails into his back, feel his body on hers. Closing her eyes, she fought for control.

  "Mina." David was saying her name in a calm voice. Steady. No fear, but no aggression or anger, either. Firm. In control. "What happened to your face?"

  Angels had no language barriers. They were understood by, and could understand, any creature, in any language, and so the smooth, deep texture of his voice resounded in her head, uninhibited by their fluid environment.

  Her free hand flew up to her face, terrified a transformation had occurred, but then she found he was talking about the blood. Her water-resistant blood remained smeared on her skin unless forcibly rubbed off. She did that now, scraping at it.

  "Nothing," she rasped. "It's not from my face. It's fine."

  "Give me my dagger, Mina."

  She opened her eyes then. He stood before the stand of sharp coral spikes that represented a barrier, but which only separated them by two paces. She'd apparently lifted the dagger out from the concealment of her cloak as she retreated from him and now held it up in a defensive posture as she scrubbed at her face.

  Still calm. He wasn't making any movement to protect himself. He didn't believe he was in any danger, the fool.

  She came over the coral with the speed of a barracuda, going in under his guard, angling up toward the sensitive abdomen. Though in hindsight she wondered why she went for the blow she knew would inflict pain, not death.

  But she'd been wrong about his intelligence. When she lunged, propelled by the greedy need within her to spill blood, to hear a cry of pain, he turned in the same moment so she missed her target entirely and he caught her coming forward.

  She could have fought, but instead she froze. Her wrist was held in one of his hands; the other was around her waist. He'd caught her up to him, though he knew her tentacles could be whip-fast. She'd pulled his legs out from under him before.

  But how did he know that holding her like this, where she could feel the solid heat of his body against every cold, aching line of hers, would make her want to c
oil the two six-foot-long appendages around him in an entirely different way? Yes, like a human woman's legs, only with the power and length to wrap around him twice, hold him no matter how violently their coupling sent them thrashing and spinning through the water?

  She breathed hard through her gills, her heart pounding, as crimson fought with something else, something white-hot and just as fierce. "You left the dagger. I found it. It's mine."

  He studied her. "I just found you. Does the same logic apply?"

  The question disrupted her bloodlust. She normally did something similar, employing simple mind games to take it off-track, give her a grip on herself again. But his holding her caused a reaction close to that violent need but different, such that she was having a hard time knowing what she wanted, let alone answering his question.

  "Mina," he repeated. "Give me the dagger."

  Her fingers loosened and he removed it, keeping his gaze on her face. Laying the dagger in a crevice, he recaptured her wrist and stretched out her arm, pulling back the cloak so the pale flesh was revealed, as well as the palm she'd just cut.

  Before the Canyon Battle, David had been the only one since Neptune's healers who'd seen her fully, who knew she was a macabre harlequin, one half of her body a landscape of scar tissue and craters formed by missing flesh. Two fingers gone, the remnants of a breast only. The other side was as perfect as the cruel laughter of Venus, with no scars to display. Or rather, there had been none the last time he'd seen it.

  Now his gaze coursed up her arm, one limb of that revolting perfection, and took in the multiple thin lines, healed places where she'd marked herself over time, all the way down to her cut palm.

  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."