Cover Him with Darkness (20 page)

“Because if this is some convoluted attempt at sex-trafficking,” I said, my voice low and shaking, “I'm going to be
really
pissed with you.”

I'd never seen a man look so shocked. “You…oh shite, Milja, is that what you think I'm after?”

“You hear about these things.”

“For feck's sake.” If he wasn't genuinely horrified and hurt, he was an actor of absolute genius. Even his pupils contracted. It was the first time he'd really sworn in my presence too. “No. Just
no
. I'm trying to help, here—you came to me…”

“I know.” I touched his hand. “You're just…”
Too likable. Too honorable. Too nice. You haven't even made a move on me, and it would have been so easy. Would I have even have tried to say No?
“Like an
answer to my prayers,” I finished sadly.

Oh Egan, please don't let me down; I like you so much.

He swallowed. “Don't you believe prayers can be answered?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“But you've seen an angel…you said.”

I thought of Azazel lying in torment. “Maybe that's why.”

We spent the morning helping stack a pile of cordwood, and then Petar took us west over the mountain range that stretches like a wall up the Adriatic shore, and down the long drop to the narrow coastal strip beyond, the three of us side by side in the front seat of his van. There wasn't much opportunity for Egan and me to talk, so we just watched the scenery. Which was spectacular.

How strange, that I'd never been to the part of my own country that's best known to the outside world. Never seen how the fragile green veil of foliage is swept aside there and the rock revealed in all its parched Mediterranean ruggedness, the yellowed grass contrasting with bright-flowering oleanders and dark pencil cypresses and red-tiled roofs. Never seen the clear turquoise waters of the Adriatic that lured so many tourists.

Petar dropped us off at the marina squeezed between Budva's fortified Old Town and its long, umbrella-packed beach. The great tilted wedge of St. Nikola's island loomed in the bay like a shark's fin.

“What are we looking for?” I asked as we walked past the ranks of yachts and rental boats—everything from scuba tours to pirate-themed booze-cruises.

“The
Grlica
. Have I got the pronunciation right?”

“Yep. It means the Turtle Dove.”

We found it in amidst a cluster of boats advertising fishing trips. I eyed it dubiously—okay, so the Adriatic might not be the roughest sea in the world, but I'd have liked to see something a bit bigger. Worse, much of its length was open deck, presumably for fishing from, with only a glassed-in cabin at the back. A muscular, leathery-looking man stood on the stern, sorting out a selection of fishing rods.

“
Dobar dan
,” said Egan.

“Hello,
Guten Tag
,” he answered, knowing instantly that he was looking at a foreigner. “Do you want to go fishing?”

“Petar sent me. He said you could take us night-fishing.”

The man on the boat straightened up, looking us over with narrowed eyes. Then he nodded. “Yes. No problem. Did Petar tell you how much it would cost?”

I didn't understand what it had to do with Petar at all, but I kept quiet and Egan answered for us. “He did.”

“That's good.” He nodded at the sky and grinned. “We leave at sunset then. We've got calm seas tonight. Be back here on time. With cash.”

“Well, that gives us time to go shopping,” Egan said as we turned our backs to the sea and headed into Budva. “I've got to buy a charger and feed my phone. And get some money out.”

“Is this costing a lot?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Well, have my euros,” I said, passing him my cigarette packet.

He fended it off. “No you don't.”

“It's not fair that you're paying for all this.”

“I'm not taking money off you. Not now, not ever.”

I thought of my stash of antiquities in Podgorica train station with an inner sigh. I'd been sitting on a small fortune, if only I'd been able to do anything about it. Some railway official was in for a nice surprise when the locker lease ran out.

So we shopped, and ate sea bream and black squid-ink risotto at a fish restaurant. A Russian tourist at a nearby table had one of those fashionable little dogs in her oversized handbag, and when it saw me it started howling.

“Shut up,” I muttered—and it did, diving back into the safety of its designer satchel.

“You could make a fortune doing that,” said Egan with a smile. “Milja the dog-whisperer.”

I tried to look amused. How could I tell him that dogs now hated and feared me? It was as if I wore an aura of contamination that humans were blind to.

After dinner we returned to the sea front and boarded the
Grlica
. There were three crew members besides the one we'd already met, and no other passengers. Everyone made a show of presenting us with our fishing rods and showing us the buckets of bait. I pulled on my life jacket
and hoped desperately that I wasn't the kind of person who got seasick.

Budva had seemed a tinselly, rather brash place from the little I'd seen of it, but as we nosed out of the marina I felt a pang of loss at our separation. I'd left the soil of my home country, perhaps for the last time, and now the town was nothing but a thinning line like a crust upon the waves. The island in the bay, and mountains beyond Budva, stayed in sight for a while longer, gilded by the sunset.

I thought of the little church under the cliff face, and snow, and eagles.

Our captain was right: the sea was calm as we headed west, though I quickly found that it was breezy enough to throw up cold spray if I stood at the bow, and that the stink of diesel fumes made me feel queasy if I went to the back where the engine was. So Egan and I retired to the cabin and I tried to get some rest on the padded bench.

Egan offered me the use of his leg as a pillow.

And that was the point at which
everything
started to go wrong.

I was in a dark place, underground. There was only one spot of light, off in the distance, so I headed toward it, feeling cool flagstones beneath my bare feet.

The light shone on Egan. He hung against a stone wall, cruciform, his arms spread wide by manacles and taut chains, wearing only a pair of jeans so old and faded and worn that the fabric was down to the weft in places; those jeans hung perilously low on his smooth hips, hinting at places I badly wanted to touch. His chest was bare, and scrawled with red letters I couldn't read. His head hung to the side as if in exhaustion, and his eyes were shut.

I bit my lips, unable to stop myself staring at a body just as solid and muscular as I'd imagined. Different from Azazel's long, lean frame, for sure, and with only a little sandy-blond hair on his breastbone, but just as enticing—if it hadn't been for the writing. It had been cut into his skin, I thought at first, but then I realized that it was written in scarlet lipstick. There was something uniquely cruel about that, I thought, as if it was intended to humiliate.

Egan, chained up and helpless
. It was a combination that sent my heart thumping and my body into rolling waves of heat. It scared me and
oh, I confess, it filled me with a sick, vertiginous longing that scared me even more.

I took a step forward. He opened his eyes.

“Milja?”

“Egan, it's okay.”

His eyes opened wider. That was when I realized that I was dressed in that silly striped pajama jacket again, and nothing else.

“Oh,” I said, and giggled in delicious embarrassment.

“Milja, what the…?”

“It's okay!” I held out a hand as I closed on him. “It's just a dream, Egan.” Should my conscience have pricked me harder? But I'd dreamed like this, hot and vivid, several times now, and the sky hadn't fallen in.

No harm, no consequences. Lucky lucky Milja.

“A dream?” He looked wrecked, and nervous. Now that I was close enough, I could see that his nose had been broken out of true and there was a red mark across the bridge.

“Relax. Don't worry.” I put my hand on his bare chest.

He jerked at my touch and shook his head slightly.

“What happened, Egan? Where'd the writing come from?”

“Writing?” He tried to follow my gaze and look down at his torso. “What does it say?”

I stared at the jagged letters, trying to make sense of them. Reading is always fantastically difficult in dreams, I find. “
We have seen
,” I announced at length. The words sounded familiar.

Egan took a deep breath, his eyes widening.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Milja, please get me out of here!”

“Don't worry,” I repeated. “It's just a dream—it doesn't matter.” Standing on tiptoe, I kissed him gently upon the lips.

Egan made a hungry noise in his throat. I felt his lips move against mine, sweet and soft, wanting me. Then, abruptly, he jerked away. “Milja, no!” he groaned. “We can't!”

“What's wrong?”

“Don't—just don't,” he protested, not looking at me, looking anywhere but me.

“Shush.” I pressed up against his body, my soft breasts to his torso,
and my bare thighs to his denim-clad legs. He groaned again, and gritted his teeth, but I felt the heat of him through the thin cloth, and I knew he was hard already and getting harder. “It's all right,” I whispered.

“No. No it's not.”

“I'm sorry,” said Azazel in my ear, and I jumped half out of my skin. Without moving, I found myself six feet back from Egan's bound form again, and Azazel standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders. “Is she not pretty enough for you?” he asked.

Egan's jaw went slack and I watched the fear flood his face. I looked up over my shoulder and saw Azazel, smiling and complacent like always. This time, however, he wore wings—not bald and bat-like but feathered, as raven-dark as his hair, and huge, even folded.

My blood seemed to fill with heat.

“I think she's beautiful,” Azazel said, stooping to kiss my cheek and jaw, running his hands over my waist and hips and ass. “Show him, Milja.”

I raised my eyebrows, not understanding.

“Open that shirt,” he murmured in my ear.

“Don't do that,” Egan moaned. “Milja, you don't have to do what he says.”

“Oh, but she wants to,” my demon lover countered. “She wants to do what I tell her. And she wants you to see. Don't you, my Milja?”

My hand moved to the top button. “It's all right,” I told Egan once more. “It's only a dream.”

He made a helpless noise of protest as I slipped the first button, and tried to look away. By the second button he was looking in quick unwilling glances. By the third he had his eyes screwed tight shut. By the fourth he was watching, transfixed.

“There,” said Azazel, taking the edges of the garment delicately and opening it up to show him my body from throat to thighs. He trailed his fingertips over the soft slopes of my bare breasts, down to the shallow curve of my belly, back to circle my nipples, down again to frame my sex. “Isn't she exquisite?”

I saw Egan's sharp intake of breath and the swell of his chest. The fabric of his pants was so thin that there was no disguising the other response of his body either: a heavy length strained visibly against the soft cotton.

I felt like I was melting under the heat of their attention. I was slippery and weak and soft as wax.

Azazel kissed my ear. “Kneel down.”

Obediently, I slid to my knees on the stones. I kept my eyes on Egan's though, as if I could impart the last fading vestiges of strength through my gaze. Even when Azazel stepped to the side to take an approving look at the spectacle I presented, I kept my eyes on Egan's face.

“See: she does as she is told. She's mine to command. Open your legs, Milja.”

I spread my thighs, slowly. There was sweat glistening in the hollow of Egan's throat.

“Play with yourself.”

For the merest moment I hesitated, if only to appreciate the exquisite flush of shame that washed through me. My hand moved to the juncture of my thighs. I was fire, I was meltwater, I was the detritus swept along in the flood.

Oh God
, Egan mouthed.
Please, God, no
.

“What's your problem, blondie?” Azazel sauntered toward him, great black wings flexing and pinions bristling like a canopy of living darkness. “Is she not to your taste?” He looked the bound man up and down, with exaggerated concern. “No, that's not it—not according to what you've got packed in those jeans right now. You like her well enough, don't you?” He glanced back at me, mischievously. “I think she likes you. Look how keen she is to show you.”