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al, using sensual pleasure to help ground themselves.
"I couldn't bear the touch of a woman for a very long time," he continued, maintaining that rigid stance, as if he were making a report before his battalion captain. "The other angels... they regularly ground themselves after battle in a woman's body. I'd go when they went in groups. Kept thinking I'd join them, but I'd reach out and..." He shook his head, something rippling over his skin, a tremor, but it had the odd look of a specter, a goblin hunched over him as he shrugged his shoulders.
"You couldn't," she said softly. She wanted to reach out to him. Fortunately she was too weak and he was too far away. "Why?"
He sighed. "Because I'd start to touch her and two things would happen. One, I'd hear that damnable thumping in my head. Thud. Thud." He flinched and turned toward the window. With his head bowed, eyes troubled and focused on the floor, he reminded her of one of the art books she'd rescued, the poses that depicted the struggle of man against eternal truths. It bothered her, but he continued before she could grope for something to say.
"That was the sound my sister's bed made, hitting the wall as my father raped her at night. She knew I couldn't bear to hear her cries. I burst in one night, tried to pull him off her. He beat me up pretty badly. Broke my arm. After that, she'd bite down on the pillow, wouldn't make a sound, afraid I'd interfere. But we were twins. I could hear it in my head. I'd go in the next day when she wasn't there, when my father was gone, and see the bite marks in the pillow, the marks in the wall where the headboard hit."
She knew now what else he'd found out about her at the Citadel. And she understood his fury, even as she couldn't breathe. It is about her. And it's about you... The picture was coming into focus, an understanding of the darkness within him. He was giving her the fringe shadows, and though she knew it was dangerous, that it would only strengthen the illusion of a bond between them, Mina couldn't stop him. She wanted to know. Even more strangely, that compulsion to go to him was growing in her. She wished she was strong enough to do it, slide her arms around him, lay her cheek against that broad back, between the wings, offer comfort. Something she hadn't even known she had in her to offer.
"I'd see the other angels with women, and I knew what they were doing was clean, real, the way it should be. But I didn't protect her, and he hurt her, so when I touched a female, I was repulsed. Eaten up with guilt. I didn't save my sister, so the act held nothing but revulsion for me.
"It was that way for a long time," he said after another moment. "At one point, I stopped going with them. It was too awkward. I started using meditation to ground instead. That's why I've discovered places like this. They called me the Monk. Teased me, but not in a bad way. Angels... we know each other's minds, so they knew what was happening with me, maybe even better than I did. I know you've seen the worst side of them, but we share each other's thoughts. Just as close as reaching out your mind to one another, never alone."
He gave a half chuckle that had little humor in it. "What my heart and mind couldn't handle, my body was raging to do, so I had to meditate pretty hard to keep those hormones under control." He arched a brow in her direction. "You think you fight darkness? Try being a twenty-seven-year-old guy who's never even had a girlfriend, surrounded by a species that regularly uses intense and creative sex to ground itself."
"I can't think of a worse torment. So what changed?"
His quick, gratifying grin at her dry tone changed to a thoughtful thin line. "One afternoon, I'd found a quiet place by a pond. I've always preferred Earth locales for my meditation, rather than the Seven Heavens or the stars, other planets. A girl came while I was there, about my age. She didn't see me, so I thought, and she was going for a swim. Took off her clothes, one piece at a time. Slow. So slow it was like I was the fabric sliding off her skin. I could feel it. Feel her, even before I touched her." He stared out the window, obviously caught in the memory, but Mina didn't feel offended, for she heard many things in his tone. Awe. A man who'd faced salvation, just waiting for him to reach out and grasp it.
"She let down her hair. This beautiful, raven black hair."
David swallowed, remembering the way his loins had ached, so hard. It had almost brought him to his knees, torn between lust and despair, self-loathing, wonder. For one horrid moment, his pain was so great he almost wanted to break her neck for making him feel this way.
Right as he had that thought, she turned and looked at him. She had the softest, pinkest lips, wet, and they formed words.
"I don't know what she said. Don't know to this day, but it was an invitation, and my feet were moving. Even though I remember her features, in hindsight, there was nothing exceptional about the way she looked. Just a girl with a pretty face and kind eyes. So kind. The eyes were what were different. So still. Tranquil. She was gentle, innocent, but also... trusting. I swam with her and she played with me, got us splashing, carrying on." The cadence of his voice slowed, dropping oddly, catching her attention as much as the story itself. "And then just as suddenly she was in my arms, all wet and naked, and I couldn't stop myself. I was trying to outrun the demons, so I was rushing, but she whispered to slow down, take my time, take my pleasure, and nothing would chase me from her.
"She took me into her body, but more than that, she took me into her soul, and I got lost in her, all the parts of myself coming unglued so I could see them, all those terrible memories, floating away, separate from all the things I'd wanted to do but couldn't.
"And she forgave me. For my sister. I don't mean she spoke it. It was just there, and as I lay upon her body, and she clasped me with her legs, kissed my throat and chest with her lips, it was like everywhere she put her mouth tore open those wounds, let them bleed out. I cried."
When David averted his face briefly, embarrassed, Mina felt a bittersweet twist in her heart.
"I'd never thought about what the word forgiveness meant until then. Maybe I figured it was just a way to get out of a responsibility, but then I understood it. Forgiveness is something given by someone who sees all of you, every dark and light corner, who knows where you've been, where you'll walk, where you'll misstep again, sees it against what everyone else is or has done, and knows it's going to be okay. That things are the way they were meant to be, that everything has a reason, even those that can't be explained. That it's okay to just be, to take that precious moment of stillness and hold on to it, use it to give you the strength to fuel everything else."
When he turned his head now, Mina saw the glitter of tears in his eyes. "It was then I knew that lying with a woman was like every other powerful magic in the world. A force for good or evil, depending on your intent. And I was denying myself that magic, and how it could make me stronger, a better angel. A better man. One who would help people like my sister."
"What happened to the girl?"
"I slept, and when I woke, she was gone. I've never told anyone about it, not even Jonah." He paused, stared out the window, then shifted his gaze to her. "Maybe because the more I've thought about it, the more I believe the girl I was with that day was the Lady Herself, helping me heal."
He cleared his throat, came back to sit on the edge of her bed. "So again, I'm sorry."
Mina studied him. "Well," she said at last. "I'm glad I didn't know that the first time we... you know. It would have been a really hard act to follow."
David's startled reaction turned to the smile that had that still-unexpected ability to make her feel better about... well, everything. Reaching out, he curved a lock of her hair behind her ear. "That moment was a turning point for me. Just as being with you was another."
"Were their many after Her?"
"A few. Not like you."
"Males always say that. It just means it was different from the last one, as the next one will be different."
That elicited a chuckle, and the sound of it sent a shiver down her spine. Angels really did need to turn it down, she thought irritably. But she was unable to move as he twined that lock of hair around his f
ingers, wouldn't let her pull away, and the look in his eyes stilled her as the humor died away.
"There are some incredibly rare people in the world," he said. "It doesn't matter what they endure, what shitty cards they're dealt. Life knocks them down again and again, until anyone with a shred of compassion is saying, 'Don't get up again. For God's sake, just stay down.' "
When his expression shifted, Mina saw raw, exposed emotion. The simple core of who he was, evident in every tautly held plane of his face, the dark, intense fire of his eyes, the way his long fingers clenched into a fist on her hair, holding her still.
"But they keep getting up. And there's something in their eyes. It might be almost gone, hidden, dulled, but if you try to force them to cross that one line deep inside them, you'll find it. It's that thing that says, 'I have the fury and the will to destroy the whole world, and I will use whatever weapon I have to end you.' "
His gaze shifted back to her. "It's not the Dark Blood that let you live through what few could. It's that spark in you. You may use the blood, but the resilience is you."
She was fairly sure she was about to be consumed by the power of what she saw in his expression, resonating inside her breast, in the pounding of her heart. "How do you know that?"
"Because you looked at an infant mermaid and had pity for her, enough to risk yourself even as a child." Tracing her face from her temple until he reached the curve of her chin, he caressed her bottom lip with his thumb. His gaze softened, in a way that muddled her mind. "You turned Marcellus's wing into a bat's wing, because deep inside it amused you. Goddess, I want to be around long enough to see you smile."
He leaned over her then, bracing one arm at her opposite hip. It was a protective and relaxed pose that didn't disturb her. If anything, she felt comforted by that sheltering presence, though a quietly alert part of her was aware of the thin sheet between them, of his gaze lingering on her bare shoulder.
As he cupped the side of her head, it felt natural to lean into his touch, let his strength hold her as lassitude sank in. It seemed she was always falling asleep around him, and not just because of the exertion of being around him, both pleasurable and life threatening. With him, she slept in a way she hadn't ever slept. Whatever her conscious mind felt, her subconscious trusted him to watch over her, so that it succumbed easily, like now. Of a sudden, all she wanted was sleep. Sleep, with his touch upon her. This male angel who was turning out to be far more than she'd expected.
