Demon's Delight (27 page)

Y
OU
should be in the hospital,” Jasper grumbled as he helped Zane up the stairs to his apartment. On the landing, Rosemary fumbled with Zane's keys, trying to find the one to unlock the door.

“No way,” Zane argued, gently pushing Jasper's arm away. He sounded stronger. “Hate those places. Sleep in my own bed.”

“Uh-huh,” Jasper said, and caught Zane as he stumbled on the top step. “If you can get there without falling on your face, that is.”

“I'm fine. Just a little groggy from the pain meds.”

Amazingly, the worst of his injuries from the fall had been a strained shoulder and a broken nose. The ER had released him, despite Jasper's vocal protests.

How he had avoided being crushed under the truck's wheels, God only knew. All Rosemary knew was that he hadn't died today after all, and as she'd recently come to understand, every day on Earth was to be cherished.

As she and Jasper led Zane to his bedroom, she got a good look at his apartment. It was masculine and efficient, decorated in navy blues and deep greens. There wasn't an abundance of belongings sitting around. Not that it was stark by any means, but everything had a place and served a purpose.

The only indulgence might have been the king-size bed with its polished posts and cozy down comforter folded at the footboard. When Zane stretched out, Jasper plumped the pillows while Rosemary leaned over and began to untie his shoes.

Zane cringed and pulled his legs up. “All right, enough with the hovering. I'm fine.”

Jasper eyed Rosemary at the end of the bed spreading the comforter over Zane and tucking it around his legs. He lifted one eyebrow. “I can see that.” He smiled at her, then turned back to Zane. “You behave for once. Do what the lady tells you. And you take care of my boy,” he added for Rosemary.

“Always,” she promised.

Once they were alone, Rosemary wasn't quite sure what to do with herself. “Are you hungry? I could make you some soup.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Soup?”

“You really should eat.”

“I was thinking more like steak, baked potato, salad. I've got some great Greek dressing I bet you'd like. I'll do the meat if you handle the rest.” Like that, he was out of bed again, and she sighed. The man never stopped.

In the kitchen, while the steaks sizzled in the broiler and the microwave hummed as the potatoes cooked, Zane reached for a bottle of wine.

She stopped him with a hand on her arm. “Not a good idea while you're on painkillers.”

He patted her on the head. “Just getting some for you, Mom.”

Dinner passed companionably and the wine went to her head. With her belly full and a light buzz, she didn't know how long they'd been sitting in silence until she finally became aware that he was staring at her, bemusement and some other emotion she couldn't define etched in his expression.

She looked down to see if she'd dribbled salad dressing down her shirt. “Something wrong?”

“No. Everything is perfect.” His voice had a husky edge that chafed over her nerve endings, making her whole body tingle.

Suddenly restless, she jumped to her feet, collected the dishes, deposited them in the sink and started rinsing. She jolted when a pair of strong arms wrapped around her from behind, and a broad chest pressed to her back. “You don't have to do that,” his voice rumbled in her ear. His warm breath bathed her neck. “I'll get them tomorrow.”

“There's no reason to—”

“Shhhhh.” He pulled her hair over her shoulder to hang down her chest and then traced a single fingertip down her spine from her hairline to her nape, triggering a string of explosions as he passed over each vertebrae. Involuntarily, she audibly gasped for air.

“Scared?” he whispered as his lips replaced his fingertip.

“Yes.”

“Me, too.” Was that his…tongue curling over her spine now? “Want to stop?”

She shook her head in the negative. Speech was beyond her for the moment.

“Good.”

He turned her in his arms and his mouth covered hers, soft and moist and unrelenting. He was perpetual motion, always adjusting, always seeking, always giving, and she followed his lead, accepting all that he offered and softly demanding more. When both their chests were heaving, he abandoned her lips to kiss a trail down her neck and murmured, “You know all I have to offer is one day at a time.”

She let her head fall back to give him better access. “I'll take it.”

He slid his hands down her sides to her hips and back up again, catching the hem of her shirt and sliding his hands beneath until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. “All I could think about during that damn jump today was that I didn't want to die without ever having a chance to do this.”

She arched her back, bringing her harder against him, and tunneled her fingers through the waves of his hair. “I don't want you to die at all.”

He stripped her shirt off and ran his hands up her rib cage again. This time when he reached her chest, he palmed her breasts and lifted them, bringing his mouth down at the same time to kiss the swells.

If Rosemary thought she had experienced the gamut of human sensation this past week, she'd been mistaken. Nothing, nothing she'd seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched compared to this. It was as if her very blood had become electrically charged. Everywhere her pulse beat, her body tingled.

Zane's hips met hers, pushed against her rhythmically. The counter bit into her back giving her no retreat. No relief from the pressure, and the tingle became a burn.

With the current inside her sizzling hotter with every nip on her breast, every touch on her neck, her ribs, her stomach, she forgot about retreat and went on the offensive. Sliding her hands over his shoulders and down his arms, she hooked her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans and pushed, stepping forward as he walked backward so that they never lost that luscious contact.

His shirt came off in the living room, and she explored miles of smooth skin and hard muscle with her fingertips. Her pants were lost in the hallway and she discovered what delicious friction denim made against bare skin. By the time they made it to the bedroom, they were down to just their underwear, and those didn't last long. Zane gave an appreciative smile for the black lace—or maybe it was for what lay underneath—when he flipped off her bra and tossed it on the nightstand.

Finally unencumbered, they lay on his big bed, their bodies entwined, enmeshed so that one was indistinguishable from the other.

Rosemary gasped at each new nerve he discovered. Each new sense he titillated. She remembered how sensitive she'd been to too many stimuli when she'd first taken on this human body, how she'd feared she would drown in the sensations. Now all she wanted to do was dive in headfirst.

She made a game out of eliciting the same responses in him that he won from her. Everywhere he stroked her body, she stroked his. Everywhere he kissed, she kissed, carefully avoiding the little white bandage across the bridge of his nose. Every nibble was returned with equal fervor. Before long he glowed with a fine sheen of sweat and her skin glowed as if she had a fever. She spread her legs and hooked one knee around his hips seeking the contact that would be the final bridging of their two bodies into one.

He rolled gingerly onto his back, protecting his sore shoulder as he pulled her on top, and brushed back the damp hair that was stuck to her forehead. “You've never done this before, have you?”

His voice had that rumble to it again. The one that passed over her skin like silk, exciting every nerve.

She bit her lip. “Is it that obvious?”

“No,” he whispered, palming her breasts again and tweaking the nipples until she moaned. “Just a lucky guess.”

Her hips bucked of their own volition as he toyed with her. His erection lay against his stomach before her and she took matters into her own hands.

“Well,” he said, his voice strained, “I was thinking the only reason you would still be a virgin was that you'd spent your whole life locked in a convent. But apparently that's not the case.”

She leaned down and tongued the center of his chest, then the spot just above his navel. “Not as far off as you might think,” she whispered through a curtain of hair.

He pulled his head back and gave her a quizzical look.

She gave him a light squeeze to distract him, then leaned down and nibbled on the shell of his ear before whispering, “Guardian angels don't get a lot of chances to consort with mortals.”

Smiling, he wrapped his arms around her back and scooted down the bed until his shoulders were between her thighs. “Then we'd better make the most of what time we have.”

At his first touch, her hips flexed of their own accord. At his second she was mindless. She devolved from a complex creature of intellect to something much more primitive. There was no thought, only sensation exploding white and hot within her body, and need. Desire so strong it stole her breath.

When Zane climbed back up to kiss her lips again, leaving a void of emptiness below, desire became greed and she swallowed him with her body. Enveloped him with her soul.

Time became meaningless. Yesterday irrelevant and tomorrow impossible to contemplate. She was awash in a hot molten river of
now
.

The fury rose. Heat and light boiled beneath her, around her, inside her until the desire detonated. It lifted her up, and away, scattering her until she settled slowly back to Earth like ash in the wind.

Z
ANE
could have lain in bed all night, watching Rosemary sleep in the dim light that slivered in around the edges of the curtains. She lay with her head on his shoulder, her breath tickling his chest, one arm draped over his waist and a smooth leg laced between his. If perfection existed, this was it.

Or almost it. Lying still gave his muscles a chance to stiffen, and his body was beginning to protest this afternoon's abuse. His head hurt and his shoulder ached. Much as he hated to let go of the moment, he needed to get up.

In the hallway he grabbed his jeans off the floor and slid them on, then grabbed the Tylenol from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He didn't bother to turn on any lights as he headed toward the kitchen to get a glass of water. He didn't need them, and he didn't want to risk waking Rosemary.

As he leaned over the tap, filling his glass, he felt something warm drip onto the back of his hand. Well, damn. He was bleeding again. Damned broken nose.

Not thinking much of it, he grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the mess, then walked over to the table to sit and tip his head back. The legs of the chair scraped over the tile as he pulled it out, and a wave of dizziness hit him. He fell more than sat down, blinking hard to clear the white spots in his vision.

When he could focus again, a dark puddle the size of a dinner plate stained the floor between his feet.

Double damn. Probably not just the broken nose, then.

His heart kicked into high gear.
Now?
God, why now? Why tonight?

Why him?

Pounding his fist against the kitchen table, he tried to stand, but his legs had turned to gelatin. The glass still in his hand shattered on the ceramic tile and he found himself lying on the floor staring up at the light fixture.

He could feel the blood flowing even more freely now, out his nose and his ears. Around the back of his neck.

Zane had never been a particularly religious man. He'd long ago forgotten how to pray and he'd never been a churchgoer. He'd sworn when the time came he would accept his death the same way he lived his life—taking responsibility for himself. But still, now that the time had come, he found himself asking for a little help from a higher power. For himself, and for Rosemary.

He wished it hadn't gone down this way. That she wouldn't be the one to find him, and have to live with that image forever. He would liked to have given her that much, at least, but it wasn't to be, because, as if his thoughts had summoned her, she stood in the kitchen entryway now wearing only his T-shirt, her hair tousled and her green eyes huge and frightened.

He had to give her credit. Her shock lasted only a moment, and then she was in motion, grabbing a cushion from a chair and propping it under his head, a dish towel from the refrigerator door to hold under his nose. Then she was up and running.

“Nine-one-one. I've got to call nine-one-one.” She looked around, then at him. “Where's the phone?”

His voice came out thick, choked. “No. No call.”

“Damm it, Zane, don't give me that! You need an ambulance. Where is the phone?”

He shook his head slowly. It was easier than talking. “No hospital. Don't want to die like that.”

“You're not going to die.”

Even as she said it, he could see in her eyes that she knew it wasn't true.

“Have a…DNR order on file anyway. Do Not Resuscitate. Nothing they can do.”

She squatted by his side, fists clenched on her knees and tears in her eyes. “Don't ask me to do this. Don't ask me to sit here and watch you die.”

“Okay.” He struggled to a sitting position, his hands braced on the floor behind him. His head was still pounding, but he felt stronger. “Don't sit. Doctor said I might have a few hours once it started. Don't want to waste them. Let's go somewhere.”

She laughed sardonically. “Go where? Out to dinner and a movie? You're bleeding.”

He thought fast, but speaking was more of an effort. His tongue weighed almost too much to lift. “Out in the desert. My truck. Beautiful out there at night.”

“You really are insane.”

He looked up at her and knew his eyes were pleading, even if his words never would. “Every second,” he said. “Full throttle.”

She struggled with herself visibly, but in the end she did as he bade, as he'd known she would. The flow of blood had subsided to a slow trickle for now, so she wrapped him up in a blanket, handed him towels in case the hemorrhaging started again, and helped him into his truck.

He gave her a queer look when she hesitated before putting the key in the ignition. “Do you know how to drive?”

She searched her mind. The information would be there, given to her by the Father when she took human form, as was all information she would need to complete her task. “Yes.”

They rode in silence until they reached a two-lane county road, where Zane pressed the button to roll down the passenger window and leaned his head against the door frame, looking up, enjoying the clear night sky and brilliant stars.

“Don't worry,” he said when he caught Rosemary throwing him worried glances. “I'm still with you. Just enjoying the view.”

The paved road led into the desert and eventually gave way to dirt. Zane pointed off to the right. “Turn here.”

He smiled when she complied. “Now, go faster.”

The truck bumped over the uneven surface. She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “I don't think that'd be good for—”

He wanted to straighten up, to show her he could take it, but in truth he didn't have the strength. Instead he beseeched her with his eyes. “I want to feel the wind in my face. Just one more time.”

Her lip trembled and he knew she wanted to refuse, but she stepped on the accelerator anyway. It wasn't the kind of speed he was used to, but the breeze at least ruffled his hair. He breathed the clean air in deep. It felt good. It felt right.

They drove for almost two hours, speeding up whenever the terrain wasn't quite so rough. He could tell she was beginning to enjoy the speed. Before long she'd be an adrenaline junkie like him. She'd changed, his girl.

She pointed out a cacti shaped like a bunny rabbit, laughing even while her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. He caught the yellow-eyed glimpses of nocturnal critters getting in a nighttime foray.

Finally his strength waned. She seemed to sense it and pulled near the edge of a plateau facing east, and cut the engine. Scooting across the bench seat, she pulled the blanket from his shoulders and wrapped it around both of them. He shifted his weight away from the window, into her, and rested his head on her shoulder.

“Too bad s'ill drk,” he said drowsily. “Bet s'nrise'll be pr'ty.”

She sniffed. “I bet it will.”

“Wish coul see't.”

“You will. It'll just be a few more hours.”

But he knew he wouldn't. One last ragged breath was all the time he had. At 11:59 p.m. according to the clock on the dash, he drew it, and let go of life.

 

Rosemary had no idea how long she sat rocking Zane's still body in the cab of the pickup, but when she looked up, a blazing pink and yellow morning sky silhouetted the figure of Saint Peter floating beyond the front bumper. His white bartender's T-shirt had been replaced by cream-colored linen slacks and a loose shirt. The eagle tattoo on his bicep was gone.

Her breath hitched as she looked up at him. “He's gone.”

“He's been gone for some time.” His voice surrounded her. Filled her. There was reproach in it, but it was gentle. “Why haven't you taken his soul yet?”

“He—he—” A tear streamed down her face. The feeling shocked her. So this was what it was like to cry. Painful, and yet oddly comforting. “He wanted to see the sunrise,” she explained, the tears falling in earnest now. “One more time. I—I couldn't deny him that.”

“Then you have learned your lesson well.” Peter smiled patiently as his image faded to dust and only his voice remained. “Let him see it.”

She stared questioningly at the empty space where he had been.

His last words seemed to reach her from far away. “The power is in you.”

Eyes wide, she slowly gathered Zane close and laid her palm flat on his cool chest. Almost instantly his eyes opened and found her gaze. His face was relaxed, pain-free as he looked out the wind-shield at the morning sky.

She felt the angelic glow envelop her, the weight of wings folded on her back.

Finally Zane turned to her, and she could see in his eyes that her true self had been revealed to him. “So,” he said, his voice calm as if they'd been discussing flower arrangements. “Not my guardian angel, then.”

“No. I am the angel of death. I've come to save you. Your soul, that is.”

“Thanks for waiting. For letting me see this.” He nodded at the windshield.

Her chin trembled. “You can see as many sunrises as you want where I'm taking you. You can
be
the sunrise. You can have anything you want….”

“All I want is you.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “I love you, Rosemary.”

She held him tighter, choking back a sob. “I love you, too.”

With her head tipped down, she looked up at him through wet lashes and linked one hand with his. “Follow me?”

He lifted her chin and his index finger uintil their gazes met. “Anywhere.”

 

“Every angel has to have a purpose, Zane,” Saint Peter said. “Ever-lasting existence would get pretty boring without one.”

Zane propped his booted feet up on the gatekeeper's desk, earning himself a raised eyebrow. “And you think I should be the inspiration man.”

“You've inspired people with your courage for years. You're a natural.”

“And while I'm busy inspiring people, I can take human form?”

“From time to time, if it's necessary.”

“And while I'm in human form I can do anything I used to? Fly an airplane? Jump out of an airplane?”

Peter smiled smugly. Should saints be smug?

“You won't even need a parachute. Of course if there's something else you'd rather do, you can. You can have whatever you want.”

“I want Rosemary.”

Saint Peter sighed. “We've been over this. You can have any
thing
you want. Not any
body
.”

“What's the difference?”

“You can't have another angel. End of story.”

“But I need a partner. What do I know about this angel cra—I mean business.”

“You'll do fine.”

“I'd do better with Rosemary.”

“She's the angel of death. How is that going to inspire people?”

“Maybe it's time she changed departments.”

Peter drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Angels do not change departments.”

“Why not? Why'd you let her hook up with me anyway? She could have just taken me when I crashed into the lake.”

“She had a lesson to learn.”

He cocked his head. “What's that?”

“She had taken many souls. She'd led so many away from pain and suffering to a better place that she'd forgotten how important life is. How precious. She'd lost her empathy for the souls she brought home.”

“So you reminded her how precious life is only to yank it out of her hands once she's held it?” He dropped his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Seems kind of harsh.”

Peter leaned back, considering. If Zane hadn't known better, he'd have said the man was flustered by the color that suddenly spotted his cheeks. “You may have a point.”

“So you'll give it a try? Letting Rosemary work with me?”

Peter paused then sighed heavily. “On a conditional basis.”

“Woo-hoo!” Zane lurched out of his chair and was out the door before the boss could change his mind. In the hall, he found Rosemary anxiously awaiting the decision and scooped her into his arms. “He said ‘yes'!”

Her smile was pure heaven.

He lifted her off her feet, crushed her to his chest and kissed her.

“I love you, Rosie,” he said.

Against his neck, he felt and heard her heartfelt, “I love you, too.”

 

From the door of his office, Saint Peter watched Zane and Rosemary practically skip down the hall, hand in hand. They were going to be trouble, those two. If a pair of angels could make a saint's life hell, they were bound to do it.

And still he smiled.