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Emotion clogged Addai’s throat. So intense it would have taken him to his knees had they been alone.
The desire to return to the chalet with Sajia overpowered him, pushing him to hurry and be done with Caphriel and his games. “Ninety days,” he said, bargaining as he had with Rimmon.
“Sixty. Beyond that, death would be a sweet release from the ennui.”
“Sixty,” Addai agreed, pulling his sword from Caphriel’s chest.
Caphriel’s form faded away in a weak shimmer, but his voice was strong in Addai’s mind. Enjoy her for the time she’s yours. The next victory will be mine, brother.
Addai sheathed his sword, and with its disappearance his wings also vanished. He turned, hardly daring to believe what he saw in Sajia’s eyes, what he’d heard in her voice moments earlier. Acceptance rather than repudiation. Love rather than hate.
I have never desired another as I do you. There has been no other for me since that day we first met. “I feared—”
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She touched her fingertips to his lips, silencing him. “You should if you intend to keep secrets from me or treat me as a prisoner.”
His heart was light, filled with such joy that he smiled against her fingers, teased, Not a prisoner, but a love slave.
He accompanied the words with an image projected into her mind, the recent past overlaid onto a far more distant one, of her naked on her knees before him, eyes pleading and hands placed in supplication on his thighs as she both waited for his command to pleasure him and pleaded for him to give it.
Sajia laughed, a sultry sound that had him hardening regardless of the blood pouring from his wounds. But then she grew somber, “You’re not healing.”
“I will with our return to the chalet.”
In her need to get to Addai’s side, concern for the teens had fled Sajia’s thoughts completely. They remained near the cabin doorway.
Neither seemed shocked or awed at having witnessed a battle between angels. They knew of the existence of such beings, she realized, guessing it was part of the history lessons reserved for scions.
The vampires of this world are the pale remains of beings fought elsewhere by my kind, Addai said, a shadow in her mind or anticipating her thoughts.
The noise of fast, powerful engines had them all looking toward San Francisco. And within minutes a swarm of speedboats had surrounded them.
Guards armed with machine guns boarded, efficiently clearing it of danger, their last duties to search the dead men then flip the bodies into the water.
A man who could only be a Tassone High Servant joined them on the deck of the fishing boat then. He was lethal beauty and deadly charm, his graceful movements making Sajia think of a cobra.
She suppressed a shiver when storm gray eyes became smooth steel, the change in them pronounced, arriving with the alien presence of the Tassone master as he took possession of his servant’s body. This was a vampire’s ultimate escape—if they were willing to sacrifice power for continued life—to be able to completely abandon their own body, leaving it behind to burn or rot or sink to the depths of the ocean while they lived on in another’s.
His gaze flickered over her, taking note of the Tucci marks on her arm before settling on Addai. “Apparently I am in your debt. What do you require to discharge it?”
“It can be accomplished easily enough. Arrange a betrothal between Sebastian and Corinne, and as part of your terms to the Tucci, Sajia is to be freed from her oath.”
“And why would I want to do that, when apparently her service would also bring me yours?”
A trap neatly laid and neatly sprung, Addai thought, the message Irial carried, reminding him that Sajia’s return was part of the weave creating alliance, now just another part of the pattern. And yet with Sajia beside him, he could muster no rage at the maneuverings that would result in him being tethered to vampires.
“For you to call on me as an ally, then you would also have to offer protection to Sajia’s family and safe harbor for the Constellation .”
“Done. Thane will see to matters until sunset, then I’ll send for the Tucci master and make arrangements.”
A blink and the vampire’s presence vanished, allowing his servant’s soul to escape whatever dark prison it’d been banished to.
Addai led Sajia into the cabin and closed the door. The wings he’d hidden after defeating Caphriel materialized as he took her into his arms.
“Home now,” he said, willing his clothes away in the same thought that took them to the chalet.
He unbound her hair as she stood in his embrace. Its silky length trailed down her back and the enticing curve of her buttocks.
