Underworld Lover (A Guardian Angel Romance #2) (8 page)

On the walkway leading from the front steps, Peter took her hand.

“Be good, you two,” her mother called out into the night air. Suddenly free from the constraints of the stifling mansion, Melanie was possessed with an errant burst of rebellion.

“Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll make sure he remains a virgin. I’ll save him for you!” Melanie was sure her mother heard her caustic words as the murderous slam of the front door came a little too late.

Peter was laughing so hard he almost fell over. “You are wicked, positively wicked, Melanie Worthington.”

“Yes, I see you have that effect on me.” Melanie didn’t feel like laughing. “So I take it you like my family, especially my beautiful mother.”

“Oh yes, but she pales in comparison”

“If you value your life, you’ll not tell her that.”

Peter chuckled. He looked up at the night sky, at the stars overhead, regarding them. He shook his head. “This is too rich. Beyond my wildest imagination,” he said as he snaked a heavy and very long arm around her waist and drew her to him like he owned her.

Melanie pulled away. “I don’t like it when you do that.” They walked for a minute in silence, side by side. “You want to tell me what fascinates you so much about my mother, dare I ask?”

“I could cut the enmity between you two with a knife. Women in battle are very sexy. I’m an ordinary man. I like to watch.”

“Oh, God, I can’t believe you’re telling me this. I can’t believe I’m listening to this drivel.”

“You both are equal in power, Melanie. Most people are uncomfortable with the display. I think that’s why the Barstows left early.” He shook his head, hands on hips. Melanie could see he was sparring with her.

“Well, I think they’d be a whole lot safer at their own house. My family home is deadly.”

Peter opened up the door to his red Maserati, and Melanie got in. “Indeed,” he said just before he slammed the door.

After depositing his long, lanky body into the driver’s seat, he leaned over and said, “You are safe with me.”

He gave Melanie a deep, penetrating kiss she could not break away from. The message was clear. He intended to claim her, and there wouldn’t be anything she could do about it. The time and place would be of his choosing. It was if she had no free will of her own.

“Who
are
you?” Melanie blurted out as soon as she could pull her head back far enough to get rid of his probing tongue.

“That’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“I’m a man driven by passion. I’m the director of a very powerful machine, and I have the ability to fulfill all your dreams. Every one of them.”

“Are you? Really?” Melanie saw his expression was almost euphoric, like he felt he was winning. She saw clearly he loved to win, above everything else. “I thought you worked for my father.”

“I represent one very powerful organization. It’s what I brought to the partnership.”

“You direct this organization?”

“Yes, I do.” He gave her a confident smile and slipped his forefinger under her chin. “Let me bring pleasure to you, Melanie. Please.” He leaned closer to her. She could tell he wanted her to touch him. An invisible force kicked in, causing her to raise her right hand as if to put it to his cheek. She had to concentrate to keep it from doing so.

“Stop it.”

“What?” His eyes sparked as he parried back at her. In his eyes, she saw a flash of red.

“You’re making me move my hand. I don’t want to touch you.”

“Oh, but you do,” Peter said, eyelids at half-mast, his breath blowing over her face.

Melanie’s hand lost the tug of war. It proceeded towards Peter’s cheek as Melanie watched with detached curiosity. When she looked into Peter’s dark eyes, she saw need there. This gave her an idea.

Her hand barely grazed his cheekbone, and then her fingertips fluttered down to trace a path to his lips. His dark eyes began to water and he squirmed in the leather seat, repositioning his large frame. A faint frown line appeared at his forehead where his eyebrows drew closer together, as if seeking counsel with one another. The touch of her fingers on his lips parted them. The rise and fall of his enormous chest made her feel like she was standing in front of a blast furnace. Peter eliminated the safe space between them, moving aside her fingers, and claimed her lips again, fully possessing her mouth.

She noticed it wasn’t unpleasant. There just was none of her desire there. Her free will was entirely absent.

“Melanie,” he whispered softly. “You have tamed the most powerful man in the universe.”

She used the trust he seemed to bestow upon her against him. He had let his power over her slip. “Are you really the most powerful man in the universe?”

He pulled back, searching her eyes, and nodded. He held her hands in his thick, veined fingers, clutching her with firm resolve. She gave him the only words she had inside her.

“And here I thought you were some powerful dark god or something.”

Chapter 10

Peter watched the human angel walk up the path to her apartment above the vacant storefront. He had been there already, the day before yesterday. He’d laid down on her bed, walked into her shower, and had stood there, smelling and feeling  the remnants of soap, blended with the oils and scents of her body. He’d buried his head in her clothes closet and had pawed through her underwear drawer, squeezing the padded bras that felt so flesh-like.

He had been truthful when he told her she had tamed the most powerful man in the universe. He felt absolutely tethered to the little blond waif, who had no idea who he was and what he could do to her. Part of him liked it that way. But he knew he would not be able to resist scaring her. It was impossible to keep him from pushing his love interests to the edge so he could save them. He loved saving them. That’s the part he did in secret and in private. His public persona was that he was ruthless. Fear was his constant ally.

But now, as he watched her walk away, the back of her light tan pants holding up the delicious mounds of her derriere, he thought about what it would feel like to bite her, or perhaps put a tattoo on her ass—a devil, or a raven, something dark. He smiled when the delicious thought came to him. When she was his, he would mark her with a dark inked tattoo containing his favorite word: 
Mine
. Yes, that would do. It would be almost worth it to have her slip, spend an evening with Josh, just to see the look on his face when he saw those words and knew he’d come in second. Second place, loser’s place. No place.

Before she was totally out of sight, she turned and waved to him. Was that a little voluntary submission on her part? Was she succumbing to his powers already? He would train her so all he would have to do was think about something and she would be on her knees to perform whatever delicacy he wished. He could hardly wait.

Melanie sighed with relief, knowing Mr. Maserati was leaving. Hard to miss him with the snarling roar his car made as he backed up and scorched the street like a seventeen-year-old.
Men and their toys.
No doubt he liked women the same way. Why were they always thinking she couldn’t put two and two together? So funny how fragile men’s egos were: the more the demonstration, the easier to topple the pillar.

She halfway thought about making up some lame story about what kind of evening her mother would be thinking she was having. She couldn’t wait to make her mother ask the question; get it stuck in her craw.

Melanie wondered when Peter had joined the firm. Must have been a recent thing, since there had been no mention of him. Not that her parents spent a lot of time or attention on Melanie.

Tomorrow would be a busy day at the shop. She was starting to put up wedding and summer decorations. Several large boxes had been delivered late this afternoon.

Melanie thought about the tall gentleman she had covered in roses and her heart flipped. Josh. How different he’d seemed from Peter. How…perfect.

Maybe tomorrow.
There was something there she needed more of.

Chapter 11

Josh was awakened by birds twittering about outside Helena’s house. He sat up, ready to do battle with the feathered creatures that disturbed his slumber. Then he remembered Melanie’s little courtyard sanctuary, covered in houses humans could purchase for a hundred dollars to add to their gardens. He snorted. As if birds needed encouragement to procreate, to twitter, to bounce around and do inane things without a care in the world except to look out for a fast dog or nimble cat.

Or perhaps a dark angel with a pellet gun.

No. He wouldn’t kill today. He could make this a day of rest. He chortled at the joke, quite sure no bolt of lightning could reach him here in the Underworld. He was safe in the dark world, far beyond Father’s meddling ways.

He wondered if Father liked birds, since he made angels. Been a number of years since he had made any with wings, though. Probably wings scared people too much, Josh thought.
Wait ‘til they get a look at Peter’s clawed, black-winged dark angels dripping in sandalwood oil and ashes.
He knew there would be blood, lots of it, in the coming days. He bet humans wouldn’t want to look at another winged animal for centuries after they were hit by what he knew was coming.

There it was again, the little twitter, the song projecting from a tiny body that seemed almost to explode it was so loud.
Where do they learn this? Who teaches them to sing?
He imagined what it would feel like inside a little blue egg under one of those little birds, listening, learning, and waiting to be born.

He rather felt like that now.

He nestled down between the light pink sheets and overstuffed rose-colored satin coverlet. The silks covering Helena’s canopied bed blew in the gentle morning breeze. He could smell her, Helena, with all the curves and all the practiced movements an experienced companion had. She was simply the best of the best. Her aura remained over his body like a thin veil. But even with all her moves, all the elixirs and spells she possessed, Joshua hadn’t been able to get it up. God how he’d tried.

What is happening to me?

The twittering got louder as the dark, carved door to the bedchamber opened and Helena, that vision of sexuality in her see-through pink peignoir, literally floated across the room, holding a steaming cup of coffee. He knew before he looked at it she put in a full one-quarter cup of heavy cream, making it a light caramel brown. She held the white mug with thin fingers, long fingernails painted a glistening red. Last night, her fingers held him in all the right ways as her mouth worked over his waiting member, welcoming him back home to the land of the living in the land of the dead. And yet nothing had happened.

She’d tried not to look disappointed when it was over; he’d wanted to keep trying for at least another hour, day, week, until his plumbing began to work again. This was not like him, not at all. He had forever. His pecker was a mere mortal, after all. A little reminder of who really had the upper hand. Josh’s eyes flashed red for just a second before he got distracted with the filmy fabric that got caught in the folds between Helena’s legs as she approached the bed.

“Your coffee,” she said, smiling. He wondered why it was necessary for her to put on lip-gloss first thing in the morning. The war of last night, the tussle and romp of bodies, was over. Certainly there wasn’t need for war paint. Or was she still playing a part? Her role in this grand scheme?

He rose up and took the mug, accepting the kiss she placed on his cheek.

“Come, sit here a bit with me.” Josh patted the bed next to his thigh as he sipped his coffee. Helena stopped and leaned her head to the right, like she was thinking about something.

“You’re in a strange mood this morning.” She sat close to him and wiped a drop of the rich dark liquid from his chin.

“I’m sorry about last night. Never happened before,” Josh whispered.

“Yes, I know. You are my most loyal customer, and more.” Her sultry eyes pierced his chest as her need rolled down to below the sheets. “It was my fault, Josh.”

A lie any practiced courtesan makes frequently, but a lie nonetheless.

“Are you happy here, Helena?” Josh was surprised he’d asked.

“Why Joshua Brandon, are you growing a conscience?” She looked at him the way she used to when she was human, when she had a warm soul, not a black one.

“Any regrets?” Josh smiled and pressed for an answer he realized he would never get. But he wanted to ask it anyhow.

“No. None. Why the question?” She smiled, but did not stroke his face like she used to. There was no effort on her part to make sure he knew how much she enjoyed his company.

“You don’t hate me for bringing you here? Ever thought about what life would have been like for you up top?” He was looking at her breasts until she lifted his chin with her red fingertips.

“Sounds like a question you should ask yourself, Josh.” She looked at him, her steely black eyes betraying no trace of humor. “I’m safe here. I like being safe. I never felt that way up top.”

“Am I your best lover, even after last night?” he asked.

“Yes. Absolutely.” And there he had the answer to a question he had not asked. She had not said he was her only lover, the only one she cared about. “You are the only one who sleeps
here
with me. But you know this.”

Yes, he knew this. He also knew other things as well. Josh knew what the landscape was going to look like as the dark forces culled the population for all the most evil ones. He wondered how safe Helena would feel then. He wondered how long the miracle of her perfectly formed body and smooth flesh would survive, especially since it was his doing that brought her here. Had he condemned her to an eternity of pain? Would there come a time when she would beg for the miracle of death instead of safety?

Josh tucked a forefinger along the upper collar of her peignoir then pulled the thin satin ribbon loose. He let the garment drape open and watched her perfectly formed breasts peek along the lacy edge like two timid schoolgirls. He could see they anticipated the feel of his warm mouth. He could claim them for his personal satisfaction as he had done many times over the years.