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He was in no hurry to catch her. If anything, he seemed to delight in the flex of his muscles, the folding and unfolding of his wings until she was driven to say, “You remind me of a male peacock.”
“An apt though perhaps unflattering description, for you are definitely the mate I intend to impress with my prowess. Put down your puny knives and after a suitable length of punishment I’ll let you handle something far more interesting.”
It was impossible not to laugh. She had no personal fear of him. How could she when desire coursed through her and she knew he would never hurt her?
But that didn’t diminish the tightness in her chest when her thoughts went to the fate of her family and her need to find Corinne. It didn’t lessen her resolve to return to Oakland.
Arrogant confidence made Addai careless. On their fourth circling pass around the living room, Sajia drifted backward, toward a door leading to a railless balcony she imagined served as a landing place when Addai chose to use his wings to fly rather than preen. As he’d stalked her, she’d been able to catch glimpses of what lay beneath and on either side of it, had discovered the house wasn’t perched on a sheer cliff, though the terrain below the balcony was steep and covered in rock and snow.
She’d mentally rehearsed her movements like a well-choreographed fight. There would be only one chance at victory.
A feint, as if she intended to make a running attack, had Addai backing up, hands beckoning, a come-and-get-me expression in place. If the stakes hadn’t been so high, she might well have answered him, determined to wipe the smug confidence from his face. Instead, she reached around her, opening the door and escaping the room.
The cold took her breath. It bit into her skin, battering against her in icy blasts until the urgency of her situation allowed her to block it out.
She moved to the balcony’s edge. Positioning herself close enough to jump and stand a chance of managing a handhold instead of hurtling downward in a bone-breaking rush that would only be interrupted if Addai took flight.
Addai followed, the amusement gone from his face and replaced by a terrible beauty. Enough, he said, lips that could call for adoration or herald damnation remaining closed as he spoke into her mind, demanded, Come to me.
Every cell in her body responded, trying to force her forward. His will was a cold lash of a whip across her soul, a thing of finely honed edges, carving away her own.
Come to me, he repeated, exerting more of his power.
She fought summons with summons, calling up the faces of her family members and seeing them being drained of blood, their bodies hung from the walls of the Tucci estate as a reminder to every human in San Francisco of the price to be paid for betraying an oath given to vampires. Calling up the image of Corinne and knowing she’d failed her.
The pendant Sajia wore grew hot, as if unseen, the parents who’d died in a fire aided her. Her skin burned where the scorpion lay against it, and the pain helped achieve what horrific imaginings alone couldn’t; it drove the sound of Addai’s voice from her mind.
He moved forward then, his expression ruthless, very nearly cruel. “Enough, Sajia. You won’t escape. Even if you are so foolish as to jump, I’ll merely retrieve you. What injuries you sustain can be easily healed. And tied to my bed you will soon forget why you ever wanted to leave.”
“If forgetting my family and my charge and my oath were that easy, I would be in your arms now.”
She took a small step backward, so she stood like a swimmer at the end of a diving board, with only the balls of her feet and toes keeping her on solid ground. “You might stop me this time, but what about the next? And the one after that? I would rather die attempting to get back to Oakland than live knowing I lay with you, finding pleasure while my family experienced only fear and suffering and death. Will you keep me a prisoner for all eternity, or end up killing me yourself when I grow to loathe you as much as I will myself?”
Her words encased Addai in ice. How well he knew the power hate and rage could wield. Standing among carnage and seeing her lifeless body had once filled him with those emotions. And what he’d done in the wake of her death made a vampire’s retribution seem merciful in comparison.
His gaze went to the pendant and he cursed it, guessing that it and it alone had thwarted his attempts to use his mind and his voice to bend her to his will. She was human in form, human in belief, and with that first breath forced into clay at the dawn of their creation, they’d inhaled a susceptibility to angelic influence.
Addai’s soul and body, heart and mind all screamed in protest at the thought of giving in to her demands. He would slaughter every Tucci, the scion Corinne included, if it meant Sajia would come to his bed willingly and accept the sheltered life he intended for her.
A primal scream welled up inside him, male frustration and the anguish of conflicting needs—to keep her safe from danger, yet find the scion and bargain with the Tuccis for Sajia’s release from her oath so they’d never again return to this argument.
The muscles of his arms stood out as he kept himself from lifting them. Were he not standing on the balcony of the home he’d had built for her, he would have raised a hand to the sky and brought forth a sword of retribution, using it to call down lightning and reduce the chalet to rubble and smoldering ash.
He would not leave Sajia here unguarded. Nor did he want to leave her with anyone else. She was too precious, too long away from him to bear parting from again, even temporarily.
“Promise you will not leave me to go off hunting on your own,” he said, as close to an admission of defeat as he was willing to give.
“Promise that you will obey if danger arises and I give you a command.” A salve to his pride.
The capitulation cost him. It wasn’t visible in his face or his voice or in the lines of his rigidly held body, but Sajia knew it regardless.
She moved from her precarious position at the balcony edge before a gust of wind could take her over. Closed the distance between them, willing to lessen the torment her victory caused him. Needing to with a depth that hinted at what they’d once been to each other, husband and wife.
It seemed natural to step into his arms, to spear her fingers into black hair as she lifted her face for his kiss. She welcomed the press of his body to hers and thrilled at the feel of his thick erection, the security of steel-muscled arms and feather-soft wings as he wrapped her in a sensual embrace.
“Promise,” he said, a command ringing in her ears and mind.
“I do.”
