“The things I want to do to you,” he growled as he pulled back only enough to run his nose along my jaw, down the line of my throat to the place his blades met my flesh.
I gasped when he minutely flicked the knife as he drew it away. A warm bead of blood welled up, trembled over the wound then began to slide down my neck. The hot lash of Priest’s tongue was there, dashing away the blood and its trail, his lips vibrating deliciously against my skin as he hummed his approval.
“You taste so fuckin’ good,” he murmured as he sucked at my neck hard enough to leave a bruise. I shivered when his teeth scraped over the sensitive, slick flesh. “Feels too fuckin’ good havin’ someone like an angel in these bloody hands.” He pulled back to grin menacingly. “Feels like blasphemy to hold you like this.”
I pressed my hips against his erection, blushing at my wantonness even as I said, “Either that’s a knife in your pocket or blasphemy turns you on.”
I felt his gravelly laughter against my lips as he kissed me hard like a punctuation mark at the end of his statement. “Fuck yeah, it does.”
My giggle died as he opened his mouth over mine and stole the noise from my throat. We kissed there on that night dark beach as dawn bleached the stars from the sky and turned the water dull and grey as lead. I was so aroused I could feel the slick of it seep down my thigh. My nipples were furled into tight buds that ached for hard, plucking fingers. There was an eloquence in the sexual demands of my body I didn’t know how to give voice to with words, so I just moaned inarticulately as I gyrated lightly against Priest’s long, hard body.
A hand threaded through the back of my hair and tugged hard enough for my eyes to smart. I looked up at him, damp lips parted for my panting breath, fixed in position by his control and my own demanding desire.
He gazed down at me hungrily with a question in the quirk of his brow. “I don’t know how you do this to me.”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel,” he said, as if that in itself wasn’t tragic. “I’d thought I hunted down all emotion to extinction.”
“No,” I argued, softening in his hold to show just how much I trusted him even if he didn’t trust the goodness in himself. The roots of my hair stung and the knife at my throat was still and portentous presence. “You felt for Cressida when King was gone. You hunted down Staff Sergeant Danner for her, for Zeus, so that she could be free of her burden and he could be free from prison.”
His mouth hardened, but the severity only made his handsomeness more palpable. “I understand revenge. I understand the concept of an eye for a fuckin’ eye.”
“You understand protecting the people you care about,” I rephrased, reaching up even when he flinched, to place my hand on his cheek, running my fingertips through is beard. “It’s why you spent the whole night out here.”
His lips pulled back over a snarl. “No one is gonna hurt you. No one is gonna fuckin’ touch you––” he cut himself off with a choked off curse in Gaelic.
“No one, but you,” I finished.
He stared at me suspiciously as if I was a mirror held up to his face and he didn’t trust the demons he saw lurking in his gaze. “No one, but me,” he finally agreed with a solemnity that felt like an oath sworn to God.
“Good,” I said casually, striving not to scare him away with the exuberance I felt in my chest, my heart a bouncy ball against the walls of my ribs. “Now, do you think you could teach me some of that fancy knife work? Just in case you can’t be there, I want to know how to defend myself.”
“It’s six in the morning,” he said flatly. “You should be in bed.”
“With you?” I asked hopefully, springing up to my toes so I could smile closer to his face, hoping to blind him with it so he might forget himself.
“No.”
I sighed dramatically. “Oh, fine. But I do want to learn. I suppose, if you don’t want to teach me, I could ask Wrath for help at Box N Burn…”
Instantly, I was in Priest’s arms again, his teeth over the hard pulse at my neck the way an animal might claim its mate. “No.”
“So, you’ll teach me,” I breathed as he bit down hard then licked the pain away with a long swipe of his tongue.
“I’ll teach you,” he confirmed reluctantly as he collared my throat with his hand and stroked over my pulse. “Because you are not weak. I’ll teach you to yield that knife I gave you properly and I’ll teach you to defend yourself usin’ just your mind and body. But you should know, from now on, there won’t be a time I’ll be absent when you need me. I may be more death than man, but I can still haunt you.”