Black Widow Demon (15 page)

By the time she turned to him, with the last of those faint, blue-green shimmers of fire flaring through her skin slowly fading, he had calmed himself.

“Do not, ever again, summon a demon to help me,” he said. “I won’t be indebted to one.” His hands still shook as he spoke. He had not calmed as much as he’d thought, after all.

Total darkness settled around them as the last of the demon fire vanished beneath her fresh-scrubbed skin. The scent of soap root still clung to her, despite the acrid smoke that hit his nostrils.

She rested her palm lightly against his chest, as if she was carefully examining his emotions. Warmth inundated him at her touch—but it was not caused by any remnants of demon flame.

Awareness of her as a woman struck him sharply.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I couldn’t stand back and let anything happen to you. I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.”

All remnants of the anger he had been nurturing filtered from his lungs. She did not know him. If she did, she would have known not to worry. He had cheated death too many times already. When it finally caught up with him, it would be no more than he deserved.

Covering her hand with his own, he clasped it against him so that she could not pull away. Their circumstances demanded he think beyond the visceral to the practical. He knew demons hated Godseekers—and men—as a whole. But this demon had asked for Justice by name.

Blade would not let her pay such a price. Not even Justice deserved to be turned over to demons. No mortal did.

“Why would the demon want you to give him your stepfather?” Blade asked.

“Because of my mother. He believes she belonged to him and that Justice destroyed her.”

Blade knew of the bond created between an immortal and the one that it claimed. His friend Hunter, the Demon Slayer, had been more than content to have Airie—his half demon, half goddess wife—claim him.

But Raven’s mother was now dead. Any bond between her and a demon would be broken, would it not?

Her cheek was against his chest now, and he lowered his chin to rest on her hair. A sudden hunger for her left his mind in utter chaos. He slid his other arm around her waist to hold her closer, sensing she needed comfort, and although unused to offering it, found it easier to do than he expected.

“I understand you meant well, but that’s a dangerous thing you did tonight, Raven. Don’t do it again. Stay away from demons,” he added.

“I try.”

She sounded tired and out of sorts, so he did not pursue it further. She was still recovering from the snakebite, and tonight’s battle must have taken a great deal out of her.

The nightlife resumed around them now that the danger had passed. Tiny, sharp-nailed feet could be heard burrowing between bits of broken rock, and above Blade’s head, a rippling of air preceded a winged predator circling the carcasses of the dead wolven.

Blade’s hunger for Raven grew stronger. He rubbed the knuckles of her clasped hand with the pad of his thumb. The desire flaring in him was not ignited by any protective instincts on her part, but the natural response of a man intent on making a beautiful woman his own.

She withdrew both her hand and her warmth, pulling away from him, and made a small noise of disgust as she cradled her elbows in a tight hug.

“I don’t want to stay here any longer,” she said. “It stinks of blood and wolven.”

Blade scooped up the packs. At least her disgust was not for him, although it should be. While it was too dark in the mountains now for safe travel, he agreed with her. They would find another place to spend the remainder of the night.

They skirted the bloodied carcasses and walked for several miles before he finally found a place to camp that seemed secure. The pale moon had reemerged from the clouds, casting thin white light onto the earth.

Blade made as soft a bed as he could manage with what he could find in the underbrush, shook out their blankets, then sat down to remove his boots.

Raven watched him. “Where will I sleep?” she asked.

He paused, one boot in his hand, to look up at her. Their relationship was an unusual one—and complicated beyond words—but one thing about it remained simple. She was a woman, and he was a man. His awareness of her in that regard had not diminished, and he knew she was equally aware of him. They had already relinquished any need for modesty between them.

“The same place you slept for the past few nights.” He tossed the first boot aside and reached for the other. “We’re both tired, and I’m taking no chances. I don’t see any reason to alter the arrangement.” He felt her reluctance to join him, palpable in the darkness, and the reason for it pained him. He took little pride in the memory of their lovemaking. She had deserved better, but it could not be undone.

His second boot followed the first. “Perhaps we should talk first,” he said. “About what happened between us.”

He did not need to explain. She understood what he meant. The tension between them grew thicker.

“I should apologize to you for that,” she said. Her frank tone did not disguise her discomfort.

He studied her as he sat at her feet. While he could not see her face clearly her stiff posture conveyed volumes, and instinct warned him to tread carefully. She was not the one who should be apologizing.

“Neither one of us was thinking clearly that night,” he said. “It was hardly the right time or place. Nothing more needs to be said. We should get some sleep,” he added gently. “What’s done is done.”

Still, she did not move.

“I’m not a whore,” she said.

He wished he could read her as easily as she read him. The ice on which he stood seemed to have become very brittle and thin somehow. “Traveling with a man doesn’t make a woman a whore.”

“Sleeping with him because she’s indebted to him does.”

He was surprised at how much those words stung. They made him think of Ruby, who’d once been his closest friend and occasional bedmate. She was a whore by profession, and even though he had never considered her one, not when she was with him, had Ruby felt indebted to him? Had he made her feel like a whore when they were together?

Was that why she had turned down his offer of marriage?

Whatever the reason, it was plain to him now that he had not made her feel as if he valued her. Pain froze the muscles in his chest, making it difficult for his lungs to expand and contract. Ruby had deserved better from him.

Raven deserved better from him now.

“You saved my life in the demon world and again tonight,” he said, choosing his words with great care. “Am I indebted to you for that? Does that make me your whore? Is that what you think?”

She was too taken aback by the unexpected twist in argument to reply.

Weary, he gentled his tone. “You either owe me nothing or I owe you in equal measure. Whichever it is, in the future I suggest we negotiate the terms in advance of lovemaking because right now I’m too tired to haggle over them with you.”

An owl settled into the sagging branches of a nearby juniper.

“You’re angry,” Raven said.

Blade stretched out on the rough bed and jerked the blankets over him. “Not with you.” He was angry about circumstances that he did not wish to explain.

She crawled in beside him. When she would have put distance between them Blade slung an arm over her shoulders, drawing her close so that her back was snug against his stomach. She was soft and warm, and if he had not known how tired she, too, must be, and that she had been ill, he might have given more thought to negotiating those terms now.

Gradually, the tension in her body seeped away.

“Blade?” she whispered, her voice drowsy.

He longed to kiss the side of her neck as he had done each night previous when she had been unaware of his presence. “Yes?”

She shifted beneath the weight of his arm so that she faced him. One of her knees slid between his thighs to steady herself, and he dragged in a breath at the intimacy of the action.

“Why have you been so kind to me?” she asked.

His attention was diverted more by her unintended provocativeness than her words. “I’m hardly kind.”

“You are. You say I don’t owe you anything. If not, why are you helping me?”

“I was the cause of the snakebite and hallucinations.”

“Before that.” She draped her arm over his waist. Her fingertips rested between the blades of his shoulders, her elbow on his hip. “You followed me from town. You said I would have been making a mistake by killing my stepfather, and you stopped me. Why did you do that?”

There were so many reasons. The simplest one was also the most complicated. “Because you wanted to live.”

“Most people do.”

She was not going to let it go. He stared, unseeing, into the black night. He did not often explain himself. “Once, a long time ago, strangers saved my life. I wasn’t used to kindness. I suppose I recognized that you weren’t used to it, either, and I didn’t believe there was any harm in helping you.”

“And now?”

“Now I do.”

“I see.”

He could tell by the pain he heard in her voice that his bluntness had hurt her. He had not meant for it to do so. Gripping her knee between his thighs so that she could not turn away from him, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “While I believe you don’t purposely intend to bring danger to others, through no fault of your own you have…abilities…that are beyond those of the people around you. I know very well what can happen when circumstances force a person to use whatever means are at their disposal in order to survive. I’d be the last one to blame you for it, and I’d also be the only one who wouldn’t.” He ran a thumb across her cheek and felt her slight quiver of response. “The night I first saw you, when Justice denounced you in front of the town, did anyone step forward to help you? Even knowing or suspecting what he had most likely done to you?” She remained very still, absorbing his words. “I watched you hesitate. You hadn’t wanted to free yourself. You hoped someone would save you,” he added. “Am I right?”

He had to bend his head forward to hear her whispered reply.

“Yes.”

“Yet you were forced to reveal yourself to them because no one came to your aid.”

“No,” Raven said. “I didn’t reveal any more of myself than I had to, and what I did that night could be rationalized by them. Perhaps the links in the cuffs were weak or not properly set. Fear might have given me extra strength. I was also used to working with metals. Perhaps I knew some special trick.” She paused. He felt the deep breath she drew in, then again as she exhaled against his skin. “What I didn’t want to reveal was that I wouldn’t have burned in that fire. That is what Justice knew and wanted everyone to see.”

Blade pondered the ramifications of that. The Godseeker wanted Raven alive. He also wanted to prove that spawn truly existed. But he could not have both by exposing her to the Godseekers, could he? They would never allow her to live.

There had to be more to this. Blade did not know what it might be and was at a loss as to how to extricate her from her current position.

She had enormous faith in her friend Creed’s ability to do so, however. She seemed to have no doubts at all that he would be willing to protect her. Roam’s message reinforced her conviction. Blade wished he could share in her confidence, but he had learned long ago that few people deserved such a high level of trust.

“Why were you there?” she asked him, interrupting his thoughts. “In Goldrush, that night?”

They were again approaching murky areas he had no wish to explore. “I needed supplies,” he hedged. “And a bath.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d spent several months crossing the desert, and I didn’t smell very good.”

She continued to press him. “I mean, why were you crossing the desert in the first place?”

“I had nothing better to do, so I thought I might look for the goddesses’ boundary and see if it can be crossed. I’ve always been curious about what’s on the other side, and if anything of the Old World remains.”

“That’s not the real reason you came here,” she said.

She was intuitive and knew too many things about him already. He discovered it did not bother him as much as it might if she were anyone else.

“What do you think the reason is?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He knew she was frowning. By the subtle tightening of her body against his, he also knew she had just lied to him.

“I’ll let us both know if I find out, then,” he said. “Go to sleep.” He tucked the blanket more securely over them both.

If her father came for her again tonight, he would not find her alone.

Raven lay with her cheek pillowed on Blade’s arm, the rise and fall of his chest steady against her upper back. Despite his efforts to make her comfortable and her overwhelming fatigue, she could not find sleep. He had said she owed him nothing, and she believed he’d meant it, but the cost to him for helping her was too large to ignore.

She knew he searched for peace, and that was something a man like Blade would never find by helping a woman who was half demon.

Black mountain peaks cloaked in midnight leered over her. Every breath of beating wings or rustle of leaves and grass left her heart racing. She shifted, not wanting to wake Blade, but she had not yet overcome her fear of the dark and all that it harbored. In the demon world she had no choice but to repress it. Here, she slid her fingers into his hand, burying her face into the crook of the arm nestled beneath her. With his body wrapped protectively around hers, she permitted herself to acknowledge the true source of her fear.

The blackness of night was isolating. And she did not want to be alone in it for the rest of her life.

Blade’s hand tightened over hers. His other fingers touched the curve of her cheek, tucking a curl behind her ear. He did not sleep either, then.