Dark Flight (The Shadow Slayers) (6 page)

With a creak, the heavy wooden balcony started to give way, and as if in slow motion, the thick latticework of slats and boards came crashing down on top of them.

Chapter Five

“Gavin!” Kara screamed and lunged toward the fallen boards. “Help! Somebody help!”

As Kara scrambled around the pile of debris, warriors tore around the corner of the house, some dropping tools as they ran. Others appeared behind Kara, as if they’d heard her scream and flashed to her aid.

“Lady Kara?” Ted called, his sword already drawn when he appeared at her shoulder.

“Gavin!” Kara curled her fingers under the edge of the heavy balcony and began to lift as her claws lengthened involuntarily, stabbing into the wood. “It fell. The entire balcony. Gavin and Aiden are under there. Help me lift it.”

Seven men grabbed the side of the largest piece of the deck and lifted. The warriors were so strong, the sturdy expanse of planks almost flew up like it was launched by a catapult.

But when they picked up the second piece and threw it just as easily, underneath was nothing but crushed potted plants. “Gavin?” She’d seen him there. Right there.

“Kara,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind her.

She whirled, and it only took her a matter of seconds to find him. Gavin sat by the edge of the pond, his features still distorted with his nose so badly broken. He started to rise but then sat back down instead. “I’m over here. And I’m fine. You’ve heard of this thing called
flashing
, yes?”

She glanced around, seeing Aiden a little farther down the path on the edge of the water. Kara trotted over to Gavin and dropped to her knees beside him. With his men hovering around her, she took Gavin’s face in her hands. She looked closer and thought she was going to gag. When Aiden had thrust his palm into Gavin’s nose, he’d actually…ugh…she couldn’t look at it anymore.

“Your nose. It’s smashed up pretty bad.”

Gavin ran his fingers over his face and grimaced. “Flaming mother of mercy. Any closer to my brain and I’d have been regenerating for a week.”

Aiden chortled, chiming in as though he was in on the conversation. “Don’t exaggerate. You’d have been fine by this time tomorrow night.”

“Fuck off. I can’t lead the clan if I’m unconscious.”

Aiden only laughed again. “What’s done is done. But as recompense, I’ll take it upon myself to travel to the Land of Desolation this very hour and let Julian know that Mazeki awaits him. Hopefully, when I tell him of how you attacked me, he won’t feel the need to do it himself.”

“Or if there is justice in the world—he will,” Gavin shot back, but he looked as though he was already simmering down at the happy thought. “Don’t forget to tell him how you took Kara to the Shadowland with you. Or that Mazeki claimed her! Please don’t forget that part.”

Kara adjusted the thin straps of her hot pink tank top. Despite the tropical climate here and the warm days back home, she was suddenly wishing for fuzzy pajamas, a plush blanket and some hot cocoa. Maybe if she had those things she wouldn’t feel the chill in her heart every time someone mentioned Julian’s name.

“Can you give it a rest, boys? Julian and I aren’t together anymore, remember? Aiden will be fine.”

Gavin gripped the end of his nose and pulled, sliding cartilage and bone from where it was embedded, and straightening the fold of excess skin in the process. Kara swallowed down the salty taste in her mouth. She wasn’t easily grossed out, but…ick.

“Shit,” she said when he was finished, and then she picked up his bloody hand and squeezed it tight. “Gavin…”

There might have been a dozen things they needed to talk about and sort through, but at the moment, she couldn’t get past her total and utter relief that he was okay. She couldn’t suffer more loss right now. She needed Gavin healthy and whole for her world to be healthy and whole. If that was codependent or whatever, then so be it. She could work on becoming emotionally enlightened once everything calmed down.

“Not here, Kara.” He rose to his feet, keeping her hand in his in the process.

“Can I be of assistance, my lord?” a warrior-turned-construction-worker asked.

“We’re fine. Lord Aiden and I were only…” Gavin shook his head, apparently deciding not to bother with putting a spin on the event. “It doesn’t matter. Get a crew in here to start repairing the balcony as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, my lord,” the man answered, and the rest of the men turned, Ted catching her gaze and holding it for a second, as if making sure she was all right.

“Come on, princess. Let me get cleaned up and then we’ll talk.” Before she could offer input, Gavin flashed them to his room. Leaving her standing in the gap between his bed and the bathroom, he walked to the sink and turned on the tap.

She trailed behind him, not saying a word. For a moment, she simply stared at his reflection in the mirror. His face and bare chest were so covered in blood, they were slick with it. But he was still Gavin—so ridiculously handsome with his burnished blond hair, hazel eyes and hulking physique that she would have called him beautiful if he wouldn’t have taken it as an affront to his manhood.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” she said. “When that balcony fell, it scared the crap out of me.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You think falling boards are going to sever my head? If that were the case, I wouldn’t have made it past twenty-five. It’s sweet though, how you still worry like a human.”

As he washed the blood-caked powder from his arms, Kara couldn’t take her eyes off him. Steam rose from the tap as he ran his palm under the water. He glanced up at her in the mirror and met her gaze when she edged closer.

“Need help?” she asked. The water was a continual stream of pink down the drain, but it wasn’t doing much to get him clean everywhere he needed it.

He ran his forearm under the faucet. “I should probably shower.”

Kara smiled. “I’m not sure I should be the one to help you with that.” But she wanted to. With Gavin, she had always wanted to.

“That’s all right, princess.” He finally smiled back. “I’m not sure I was asking you to.”

She huffed and shook her head. “Yeah, right. You should be so lucky.”

Being in Gavin’s bedroom, a place he rarely invited Kara to enter, was stimulating enough. But watching him splash water on his chest, imagining him naked in the shower behind her—her nipples hardened painfully. Combined with the chills on her skin, she could almost imagine it was Gavin suckling at her breast. After the irrational terror she’d felt for him when the balcony had collapsed, she wanted to touch him almost more than she could bear. Training with Gavin had been difficult, but this was torture.

Compromising with herself, she began opening cupboards and going through drawers until she found a clean stack of white washcloths. She gathered one up and went to the faucet, pushing Gavin’s hand out of the way to saturate the cloth. After she’d squeezed the water out, she turned off the tap.

“Stand up,” she told him.

His eyes never leaving hers, he turned and rested his rump on the counter, bringing his face in line with hers. She slid her left hand along his cheek and into the hair at his nape, and with her right, smoothed the damp cloth along the curve of his nose. The look in his eyes, hot and dangerous, made a thin film of sweat break out on her skin. And she’d discovered that for a Demiáre female, sticky skin was never a good sign.

She rinsed the rag and started in on his cheeks, but one dark drop of watery blood slipped down his chin and made a path through the blond hair on his chest, not stopping until it fell into the low waistband of his buckskin pants.

His eyes traced the path to where the drop had disappeared. “You missed a spot,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.

She rinsed the rag until it ran clear, then she dragged the hot cloth along his hard abs, just under his belly button. Gavin’s breath hissed in between his teeth and his cock stirred, pushing up against the thin suede covering it. “Holy mother of Eve, Kara. What sins have I committed to deserve this punishment?”

“I…I’m sorry.” Almost lightheaded, she went to set the rag down on the counter.

Gavin grabbed her hand and brought it to his chest, steering the cloth firmly over his defined pecs. “Don’t stop.”

She rinsed the rag again and again, rubbing it over him until his skin was rosy and every trace of blood had been cleansed away. By the time she was finished, his breathing was ragged and the mammoth erection straining against his pants was such a temptation, she had to repeatedly swallow down the saliva pooling under her tongue—the moisture she would rather use when she took his crown deep into her mouth.

“Julian…” she whispered, and she wasn’t even sure why. The name was like an incantation to ward away evil spirits. But then that was how Gavin made her feel in this moment—wicked. The irony of it was that she didn’t have anything to feel guilty about anymore, no more reasons to deny what was happening between her and Gavin apart from the residual pain that had made itself at home in her heart.

“I haven’t forgotten. I know it’s too soon for you to consider me.” He glanced out the window over his large sunken tub. “The knowledge that you’re hurting because you love him is always with me. Every moment of every day. When I sleep, I dream of it.” He ran a hand through his unruly hair and then drew his gaze back to her. “Unfair, isn’t it? That even in my dreams I’m not allowed to touch you?”

When she went to set the rag down this time, he let her. “Sometimes, I’m not sure how we got to this point, Gavin. I look at you, and I have no clue.” He didn’t answer, just stared into her eyes, maybe waiting for her to come to her own conclusions. “I guess we never had a chance.”

“No, we had one. But I was a fool. And now, maybe it’s simply too late. I…I’m sorry for raising my voice at you. I’m usually good at controlling my emotions…but may the flames of hell freeze over, I will not hand you over to Mazeki. When I heard of his claim on you, something inside me broke.”

He stood and used her hand to pull her closer. “You believe that, don’t you? That I’m sorry? That beyond my responsibility to my clan and my son, my greatest goal in life is to keep you safe?”

His son…the reason they were training in the first place. She stepped back to put a few inches between them, but she couldn’t help dragging her fingers along his wrist as she broke the contact. “I know you care about me, and I know it’s more than just an old obligation to my father. Protecting me is some obsession with you. But if you care, show me how I need to be shown.”

“How is that?”

“Trust me, and treat me like an equal. As much as you want me to be a lady of the clan who lives this gilded-cage life of leisure, that’s not me. If you want me in your life, accept me into every part of it. Damn it—you trained me! You worked with me. How could you betray me like this? I’ve earned a place by your side when you go after Brakken.”

His face went ashen. “Kara, don’t ask me to prove myself by taking you into battle. I never meant to deceive you. It wasn’t like that. You were so eager…and I couldn’t say no. When it comes to you, sometimes I’m not strong enough to do what I know is right.”

It was odd, hating to cause him anguish and yet also being livid that he was so damned old-fashioned. “If you want someone who’ll drop her hanky and ask you to slay her dragons, I think you picked the wrong friend, Gavin. I don’t fall apart because a black-wing says he has a claim on me.”

He stood to his full height, and that was six feet seven inches of pure muscle, as sexy as it was intimidating. “And which black-wing are we speaking of? My father, who wants to punish you for my brother’s death? Or Mazeki, who thinks he holds the pink slip on you like you’re a used car?”

Kara shrugged. “Both. Either. It doesn’t matter. I can handle it.”

“I’d rather have you gouge my eyes out when I return from the battle than worry about what might happen to you in the Shadowland.”

“If Mazeki doesn’t help Julian connect to his powers, your chances of coming back at all are dismal.”

“I’m strong for a silver-wing, Kara. It’s not as hopeless as you seem to think. But even if I wasn’t, that would only be more reason to have you under guard on the island when I make my move.”

He was full of it, and they both knew it. Gavin couldn’t take down his father, a powerful fallen angel, without some serious assistance. Kara had the map and the guidance of someone her father had trusted, and even if Mazeki seemed slightly off now, the fact that her father had held him in his confidence at one point had to mean something, didn’t it?

“Mazeki told me what we need to do to help Julian send Brakken to the Abyss. Just one little thing, and we tip the balance in our favor. We can do this.”

One dark blond brow rose. “Forgive me for not trusting a man who’s declared his intention of breeding you. Hell, Kara, with the scent of your damp skin in my nostrils, I don’t even trust myself.”

She stepped closer to Gavin, her chest to his stomach, and craned her neck to stare up at him. It was closer than she’d usually get to a frustrated mountain of a man, but it wasn’t close enough. “Do you want to protect me?”

His hands dropped to her hips, and he nodded. “I do.”

“Then be on my team, big guy. I’m doing this with or without you.”