scampered nearby, and Sam glanced up to see a pair of boots, attached to a very desirable female, swing around a corner and up a stairway.
“The muse.”
He caught a whiff of her luscious perfume. Mint entwined with vanilla spice. The scent permeated his pores and swirled within his being, winding deep into his core. Want emerged as a powerful burst of desire.
He wanted to taste the muse. To wrap his hands about her soft skin and pull her close to his body. To experience the pleasures only she could give him. For the Fallen could experience pleasure only with his muse; no common, mortal female would serve.
Inhaling, he drowned his senses with her teasing scent, spritzed over skin the color of crushed cacao. He wavered, slapping a palm to the wall to steady his dizzied senses.
This is what you Fell for. Take her. Receive the mortal flesh.
“Must … have.”
Darting up the stairs, his wings dragged along the ceiling, cutting a jagged line in the plaster. He rounded the corner and sighted the boots again. Jumping the steps, he pounced onto the square landing between the two levels of stairs and swept up a wing to block the muse from running higher.
She screamed and punched at his jaw and chest, delivering a random yet skilled defense that made him chuckle.
The sigil at her wrist glowed brightly, and he knew his own did as well for it flared hot at his hip. He moved in closely, trapping her against the rough cinder-block wall. The Taser dropped to the floor.
Her brown eyes grew wide and fearful. She tried an open-palmed punch with her free hand and landed it sharply on his chin. He smirked and slammed a wing tip aside her body, pinning her in on the left. And with his other wing, he coved her into a cozy trap.
“This is not you, Sam! It’s the compulsion.”
Silly chit. She thought to know his nature? He desired her, and he would have her.
Flicking a single silver feather under her chin, he savored the soft heat there. The muse’s heady scent filled his pores. He read her nervous fear, and it heightened the desire with a dangerous twist. Truly, the Fall—and his resulting imprisonment—had been worth the sacrifice for this moment.
“Agothé!”
His shoulders jerked back, his spine following. Forced away from the muse’s teasing flood of desire, he was slammed against the ceiling, wings bending painfully along the walls to fit into the small stairwell.
The muse took off up the stairs, while he struggled for release.
That damned spell! Why had he given it to her? In full human form his brain had apparently favored the muse’s safety over his desires.
He flexed his feeble mortal muscles, but it was as if he were glued to the wall and could only wiggle the very ends of his wing tips. “Curse it all!”
Grunting and struggling, he decided if he shifted to human form completely perhaps he could loosen from the spell’s hold faster. The shift liquefied his wings and shimmered them to particles that segued to nothing. His shoulders pulled away from the ceiling, tearing out the plaster in chunks—and he dropped to land on his knees and palms.
Blinking, Samandiriel gasped in breath. He needed to breathe like the mortals, and it startled him at how difficult it was at this moment.
Why had he chosen this punishment? Walking earth? It could never match the paradise Above offered. Had his passion been so unrelenting? Or had he merely joined the pact with his brothers out of common need to belong?
We had only wanted what He gave man.
A bit out of sorts, Sam searched his recent memory to piece together why he knelt in the stairwell. A glint of black demon ash floating through the air reminded him he’d just slain a Sinistari. Over a woman.
“Cassandra.” He’d held her against the wall. Had desired her so strongly. “No, I did not. I could not.”
He scanned down the stairs. If his heart could beat, it would thunder right now because he feared what he may have done to her. He’d never wanted to scare her, to make her feel fear.
He raced up the stairs and kicked open the roof door.
Snowflakes bruised his cheeks and eyelids as they swirled and shifted in the conflicting winds. Across the roof, the muse stood at the edge, looking down, her arms stretched out for balance. Her boots stepped closer to the sky….
“Cassandra, no!”
At her side in an instant, he clasped her into his arms to keep her from jumping. The delicious warmth of her burnished his cold heart.
Saved her. Don’t want to lose her.
She struggled and kicked. He didn’t want to release her, but her scream registered the same scream he’d heard when he’d been in half form. She’d been utterly frightened then.
Humiliated by his own uncontrollable impulse, he released her and stepped away, slapping his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry, Cassandra. That wasn’t me back there. Please, you must realize that.”
She slunk down against the cinder-block border edging the roof, nodding profusely but not looking at him. She tucked her head into her palms. “I know. But you scared the crap out of me.”
“Is that reason to jump? To end it all?”
“There’s a huge snow pile from plowing out the parking lot below. I’d have landed safely.”
“I see. It still saddens me that I frightened you. What can I do to earn your forgiveness? Tell me, please, and I’ll do it.”
Cassandra, gasping and hugging herself against the cold, bent forward, long strands of hair and ribbon spilling over her face. She put up a hand to keep him away, and he respected the silent yet shaming request.
She’d just witnessed a Fallen one slay a Sinistari. Quite a lot for a mortal to take in, even one trained to expect just that thing. What, you think the vampire heart didn’t scare her?
“Oh, Sam.” Her tiny voice filled his vision with soft violet waves the color of bright summer fields. “This is all a bit crazy. I’m sure I’m not thinking right, but … bloody hell.”
She lunged forward, slipping her arms over his shoulders and hugging him tightly. “You’re the one person in this world I should stay away from, yet at the same time I want to remain next to you. It’s like I feel a compulsion of my own. It scares me.”
“Don’t be frightened.” She felt so good pressed against his bare chest. So real. “You’re strong. Trust your instincts.”
“But my screwed-up instincts tell me we need to stay together.”
“To accomplish what I’ve set out to do.”
She nodded against his neck and shivered. “Kill the Fallen.”
“And
