Shadow Fall (9 page)

It was impossible not to smile. “Four o’clock would be good. I’m going to need a good breakfast. Or brunch. Starving here,” she added with a huff. The choco-brownie mush hadn’t lasted long with her athletic metabolism. “And we have to run by my place for my stuff.”

“Good,” Custo said, a devilish grin flashing. “Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s return to another train of thought…”

His eyes lowered to her mouth, mimicking her earlier suggestion.

Oh boy…
Her high excitement abruptly condensed and lowered to a tight, bright burn deep in her center. Custo.

She’d had one lover before, long over, but never, even at the peak of that passion, had she felt a fraction of the desire Custo evoked with the rake of his lust-hungry eyes. How could it be that an angel and temptation were one and the same?

Annabella’s breath caught as Custo leaned forward and found her jaw with his mouth, whispering against her skin as he traced a line toward her lips. “Your mind is a jumble, but it’s clear the direction you’re going. Decide already.”

The thought of her body under his, his muscles bunching, broad shoulders flaring as he braced himself over her had the burn coiling into a sublimely torturous, yearning knot. She was happy, celebratory, and,
yes,
she wanted it all. She wanted him.

“There it is,” he breathed. He brushed her lips with his. The flame leaped at her core. Delicious, searing.

Custo’s mouth settled on hers in a hot and hard press of heat and she was adrift in molten sensation. Angel, demon, she didn’t care. She was near senseless with the smooth friction of his mouth, the way he surrounded and consumed her body in the furnace of his. Custo must have moved because his hand supported her head, the length of his arm at her spine to hold her close. Her sexy protector. His chest against hers was hard, strong, and packed with strength. Her muscles answered by loosening in some places and straining in others in a strange coordination that took no years of practice, just human nature.

She barely gasped for air when he darkened the kiss to taste her. He found her hip and drew her snugly against his thigh. The movement sent a deep, glorious thrum through her system. She squirmed against him, trembling—
yes, please, more!
—her hand finding and fisting in his hair. He eased his palm under her ass to move her onto his lap. She helped, straddling him, not caring that the bedsheet slid to the floor to leave her tank and underwear exposed.

Annabella reciprocated by pulling his shirt from his pants—too bad he’d been so neat and pressed before—and feathered her fingers over the ripples of his stomach to the defined mound of his pecs. His skin was smooth, hot, his nipple a flat patch of satin.

Her body was talking now, and she’d spent her life learning to listen to its demands, coaxing its limits higher, stronger, faster. Custo was about to push those limits further, his wide hands hot on the bare skin of her thighs. His thumbs fingering the elastic of her panties.

Yes, yes. Naked would be good. Naked would be very good. She squirmed to give him access, but he grabbed her hips with both palms to hold her still, groaning.

“Stop that, Bella. I’ve been two years dead…damn it…” His voice was gruff against her mouth, as if he were fighting himself.

The torturous knot in her pelvis pulsed, ached. She’d known him a single day, but she was certain that there was only one thing to do to a Custo on the brink: push.

The bunch of his shirt caught her wrist. She reversed her direction, sliding her hand down to the tight waist of his pants. A damn belt held them firmly in place, so she wrapped her fingers around the band and pulled at it with a whine.

“Not yet,” he murmured as his mouth broke away to graze her neck. She tilted her chin up to give him the length of her. To give him everything.

Warm breath brushed her cheek and sent a chill down her back, prickling her skin. Custo nuzzled the hollow below her ear. His teeth grazing, just
there.

A sudden flash of the wolf’s mouth on that very spot had her blood stalling, her muscles freezing up with poison cold and a memory of fear. Her nerves quivered, but not in a good way. The wolf had wanted to be inside her, too. Had touched her just like that.

Custo froze as well, his mouth on the bad spot.

Reality shredded the moment.

She focused her lust-clouded eyes and took in the foreign apartment and remembered why she was there. Custo was so fantasy-hot, but…
This is too fast. Too much.

“I’m not the wolf, Annabella,” Custo said against her skin. His chest heaved against her, their shared rhythm now at odds.

“I know you’re not,” she said.
But…

One coherent thought allowed a line of others to intrude: She didn’t really know Custo at all. Angel? Insanity. All she really knew, really trusted, was dance.

Dance. And not the bedroom kind. She should be getting ready.

The last embers of her arousal doused with a sick, disappointed hiss. She shifted back, away from Custo, easing herself first on the bed, and then scrambled to stand at the side.

She took a steadying breath. “I’m…uh…interested. There’s just a lot going on…” Her feeble attempt at an explanation dribbled away to nothing. The air was cold on her almost-naked skin. With him glowering at her like that, a long-dead vestige of her modesty kicked in, shaming her. Heat scorched her cheeks while she shivered.

But if he had something to say, she’d take it before running and hiding in the bathroom. She owed him that much. She trembled, waiting, hoping she hadn’t completely screwed things up. Yeah, he was going to help her, and he was physically delicious, but, well, she was starting to like him, too.

Custo inclined his head, jaw flexing. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t have to apologize. That made her feel worse. “It’s just—”

“Don’t worry about it.” The side of his mouth slowly tugged up, but she could see the muscles of his body were still tense. He stood, approached—the smell of him had her aching again—and kissed the top of her head. “I have some work to do before we leave for the city. I better get to it.”

Custo stalked from the room, casting a glance over his shoulder to catch Annabella dragging on a pair of sweatpants, blue washed to pale gray. Lovely, pale legs, quickly, furtively hidden.

As she’d kissed him, her body moving against him, he’d caught her single, stressed thought: wolf.

Anger had every nerve snapping. What was he thinking? Not twelve hours ago the wolf had assaulted her. Without the intervention of Talia, who knows what might have happened?

Annabella was coping with so much. The least he could’ve given her was a little space. A little self-control. Even now, the thought of her under him had him adjusting his pants.

Custo sat at Adam’s computer console in the living area and touched the screen to activate the monitor. He stared at the list of credit card charges for gala ticket sales, but the names and numbers were a blur of black and white. He flexed his hands hard to burn away the memory of Annabella’s satiny skin. Her sexy, slender body.

Besides, he had plenty of business to take care of, old and new, before he could linger with her the way he wanted—the memory would have to last an eternity. Soon he would be caught, if not by a seriously pissed-off Shadowman, then by some holier-than-thou avenging angels, and dragged out of this world. He had a lot of work to do before that happened.

Custo forced his concentration onto the screen, tabbing to the contact addresses and telephone numbers associated with the credit card accounts.

He put in an earplug so he could talk as he worked. “Tommy?”

“Here,” Tommy’s gruff voice buzzed across the line. “Good to have you back, man.”

“Good to be back. I trust you’ve been brought up to speed?”

“Yeah, I got it. Adam gave a general security briefing this morning, told us that we were all at your disposal. Says there’s some scary shape-shifting Shadow monster after your girl.”

His girl? Not yet, but Custo didn’t correct him. “I want to get Segue operatives into as many seats as possible. Put together a team. You have whatever funds you need to buy back what you can. I’m sending the credit card list to you now. Be discreet.”

Custo ended the call and selected another file, the Segue personnel manifest highlighting staff members from before and after his death. One of these trusted people was a traitor, a wraith collaborator. Adam had gotten a head start on reviewing the profiles, tagging names with thoughts and background information.

The gala was the night’s priority, but the traitor was Cus-to’s past life’s unfinished business. Spencer, the asshole who’d killed him, had been so smug with his ridicule about the traitor, so confident in the success of the back-stabbing shithead who wanted to bring down Segue. It had to be somebody close to Adam to get Spencer off like that.

But who? These were all trusted men: Tommy, Jens, who’d apparently lost a lot of hair in the past two years, Gomez, Jackson…The list went on.

Setting up a team had never been this difficult.

Maybe Tommy could buy up the tickets, but someone else should head the security around the stage. Tommy’s smooth, affable style would have been perfect for the gala, but Jens could take point. Break up and overlap the duties for double coverage.

Custo himself would be with Annabella at all times.

And Gomez? Jackson? How much did he really know about them?

Damn it. Custo gripped his skull in frustration. He didn’t know whom to trust.

Chapter Eight

C
USTO
smothered a smile as Annabella chanted “lashes, lashes, lashes” while she tore apart her cubby of a bathroom.

Lashes? Well, okay…
but he restrained himself from commenting on his willingness to participate in
any
and
all
of her unusual sexual fetishes and surveyed her apartment with hungry interest instead. He wanted to know everything about her.

Her studio was a narrow space jumbled with colorful…stuff. The kitchen sink behind him was tidy, a short fridge snugged under the counter. A coffeemaker and hot plate cluttered the other side of the sink. A futon ran along one wall, reclined in sleep position, sheet in a twist, bold patchwork blanket still in the half-cocoon shape of her body. Pillows littered the area in deep reds, blues, greens, some with fussy tassels, and a small old TV-DVD combo unit took one corner. Clothes were everywhere, but mostly piled on one of her two chairs. The place smelled sweet and feminine, no one scent predominating.

Photographs sat on every surface, glass fronts glinting as the afternoon sun poured in her window. The one nearest was of her with a middle-aged woman and a young man wearing a graduation gown. The three shared Annabella’s coloring, and the way they squeezed one another’s shoulders, faces angling for space in the photo, told Custo they were her family.

For the first time in years he felt a pang of jealousy, the kind that used to precede a flood of bitterness when he’d been at school and heard the other boys going on about their family vacations. Not that he begrudged her a family where he had none, but he wanted to be in that photo, a day in the life of holding her tight, mugging for a camera.

Stop.
But the want sliced through him anyway, cold and harsh. There would be no photos. Their relationship could not possibly end that way, and he’d learned a long time ago that fantasies only made reality worse.

“Yes!” Annabella shouted. He turned as she emerged, waving a small package in her hand, a set of spidery fake eyelashes. As if her natural ones needed any help. “Now just let me run the garbage down the hall, and we can go.”

“I’ll do it,” he said. No need for her to carry the trash when he was there.

“No, no, I take out my own. But can you…uh…watch me from the door?”

Of course he’d watch her; he wasn’t taking his eyes off her until she was out of danger. He’d have followed her, but his earplug beeped, and he let her drift down the hallway, plastic bag in hand, so she wouldn’t be bothered by the security details for the night’s performance.

It was a simple, but comprehensive plan: Annabella would dance, opening a way for the wolf to return to his Otherworld territory, per his wishes. Segue soldiers would be in the audience, backstage, and surrounding the building, exit strategy in place for Annabella, should anything go wrong. City Center personnel had been briefed about extra security posing as stage crew and were cooperative with Segue’s measures. Custo would be side stage, prepared to give the wolf extra incentive should Annabella attract his interest again.

“Custo here.”

“We’re in place,” Jens said. “We have the stage area covered and seventeen operatives with tickets for tonight’s performance.”

Custo stood in the apartment doorway while Annabella ducked down the hall. He leaned out when she rounded the corner. With an abrupt clatter of metal noise, she was headed back toward him. She held up a finger, mouthing “one minute” and knocked on a neighbor’s door.

He nodded to her, but spoke to Jens. “I want minimal disruption to the flow of things backstage.”

Jens’s com crackled again. “Where will you be?”

Custo thought that had been understood, but it bore restating so there was absolutely no mistake. “I’ll be with Annabella.”

Annabella stopped at her neighbor Peter’s door and signaled to Custo that she needed a minute.
Yeah, right.
She needed way more than a minute; the way Custo looked at her had the liquid heat in her blood short-circuiting her brain. She got no relief since he had to stay nearby to protect her, to keep the wolf in the shadows. Her dependence was as unsettling as her attraction to him.

She had to concentrate on
Giselle
. The rest of the world, Custo-the-angel included, she couldn’t entirely trust. All that was too different, too strange, too frightening to grasp. She had to focus on what she knew.

But, heaven help her, if not for the looming performance, she could easily do something very stupid. She almost had earlier that day. He’d just looked so good and smelled so good, and then he’d
felt
so good, better than anything she’d ever imagined with or without the aid of movies and steamy fiction.

Her sanity was hanging by a thread. Only dance could save her.

But first she had to deal with Peter.

She rapped on his door. Guilt had her gnawing on a fingernail, a habit she’d taken great pains to break. Talking to him was torture, but he’d worry if she didn’t show up at her place for a few days without letting him know. She always had in the past. And he’d been so good to her when she first moved into the building, so green to the city that she almost backed out of her lease to live with a bunch of other dancers when she really wanted to be on her own.

Peter opened right up, his expression avid.

“Annabella.” His voice was deeper than usual, almost gruff. He reached out a hand to touch her, but must have thought better of it because he dropped it back to his side to grip his thigh. And he was shaking.

“Hey, Peter…I just wanted to let you know that I’m probably not going to be around for the next few days. I’m…um…” Annabella heard Custo on his call, something about stage security, and glanced toward him.

Peter leaned his head out to look himself, and abruptly pulled back, wincing in pain. Yeah, Custo was hard to compete with, especially with that possessive lock his gaze had on her.

Peter’s expression changed from excited to betrayal. “I don’t understand,” he said, almost a growl. “
We
should be together. You came to
me.
”

Annabella flushed to hear him admit his interest. He never had before, though she’d suspected he was working up to asking her out.

What was with impossible men today? Annabella had never meant to lead him on. She had no idea when his feelings had gone past friendship to more. Maybe he’d always wanted more. He was attractive—tall, with dark-toned skin and expressive black eyes, though in his late thirties, a little old for her. And maybe there had been a window of opportunity somewhere in the past couple months when romantic feelings could have developed. But once Venroy had asked her to be Giselle, all her attention had abruptly shifted to the studio.

“I am so sorry. We just didn’t work out that way.” It was particularly awful that gorgeous, glowering Custo was standing in the doorway of her place while she tried to let Peter down easy. Talk about adding insult to injury.

“I could take care of you,” Peter said. “Give you what you need.”

She’d been about to offer the standard ongoing friendship, but his last comment, way too desperate, stole the words from her tongue. The conversation had just gone from uncomfortable to disquieting. Time to go.

“You’ve already helped me so much,” Annabella said. “I have to go. I’m late for the theater already. I just didn’t want you to worry if I disappeared for a couple of days. After the performance, I’m probably going back to my mom’s.” A lie, but Peter didn’t have to know that.

“The performance?”

“Yeah.” He should’ve remembered; she talked of little else for so long. “Tonight’s the big night. My dream come true. I get to dance
Giselle
for CBT.” She stepped back to signal a close to the conversation. She really did have to go.

“The dance is your dream?” He leaned forward to follow her, but pulled back with a hiss.

“You know me.” She shrugged and took another step back. And another. “Everything is dance, dance, dance.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

Oh, no.
The last thing she needed was more stress. Besides, if poor Peter tried to see her, or…or…come on to her, Custo was likely to wipe the floor with him.

“I’m pretty sure it’s sold out,” she said, turning to her apartment.

“It’s your dream,” Peter repeated to her back. “I’ll be there.”

Custo leaped out of the Segue SUV at the City Center’s Fifty-sixth Street entrance and reached back for Annabella. What he got was her tackle box, retrofitted to hold stage makeup. She clambered out in jeans and an emerald green peacoat, wooly gray scarf at her neck, a massive duffel on her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a slick, tight ponytail that made her face teenage young, accenting her luminous skin and exquisite eyes. Her excitement brought faint, delicate color to her cheeks. The air around her crackled with energy.

“I’m late,” she said, but she grinned.

She was hours early, so she had to be very nervous if she was worried about the time. “All you have to do is dance,” Custo said. “I’ll be just offstage, watching you every second. Everything is going to be fine.”

“It has to be perfect,” she corrected, and stalked toward the door.

Custo slammed the door closed behind Annabella and hit the roof of the SUV for the driver to move off. Other Segue vehicles crowded the street, but so far it seemed Adam hadn’t elected to use his dispensation from the government to close off the block. If everything went as planned, the measure wouldn’t be necessary.

Custo moved to follow Annabella, but a tingling feeling had him turning back.

Luca. The last time Custo had seen the angel was in a backward glance thrown at Heaven’s Gate just before plunging into the water and making a break for the Shadowlands. Now Luca stood on the other side of the street. Come to fetch him, or worse.

Though traffic passed on Fifty-sixth, Custo met Luca’s gaze and held it. The world disappeared for a moment; only Custo’s heart, pounding furiously, and Annabella, thoughts full of dance, existed.

One night,
Custo begged. He fisted his hands to control himself. He couldn’t leave Annabella now.

Luca’s hard expression didn’t change, though Custo knew the angel had the same capacity to read minds as he.

One night. That’s all I ask. I have to help her.

Luca frowned.
You never understood.

Angels’ minds were so much easier to discern than mortals’—clear, uncluttered, full of purpose.

One night,
Custo repeated. He didn’t wait for an answer—there was only one: he was staying. As he turned away from Luca, breaking the grip of his gaze, Custo could feel the shear of the universe, as if he were ripping himself out of its fabric to hurtle headlong into his own darkness.

So be it.
Custo doubled his step to catch up to Annabella, who was just opening one of the building’s brassy doors. He could feel Luca’s eyes at his back, his condemnation rolling across the street. Well, Luca could chastise him for eternity, but later. After tonight. There was no way anyone was going to drag him away from Annabella’s side until the wolf was back in the Shadowlands. This performance had to succeed.

And afterward? Annabella would have to develop a mastery over the magic, just as she had her dance. Talia could guide her, following the birth of her babies. This wasn’t the way he wanted to leave. He’d wanted to help her himself.

Annabella hurried across the lobby. “Where’s the warm-up class?” she asked a harried-looking woman carrying a frothy pile of white.

“Fifth-floor studio. They’re starting now.” The woman had a needle dimpling her blouse, thread cascading over a breast. Must be someone in charge of costumes.

“Thanks,” Annabella said, hurrying to the elevator and hitting the up arrow.

“Class? You don’t have time for a class,” Custo said, utterly bewildered. He’d wanted to brief her on his team’s assessment of the building’s exits, introduce her to the team members she’d be able to turn to for help, take a moment to tell her that everything was going to be fine, to trust him.

But she was beyond that. The elevator
bing
ed almost instantly. “Oh, no no no.” She shook her head as she unbuttoned her coat.
Class is essential.
“I have to warm up. I have to be ready.”

“But Anna—”

She shoved her coat into his arms. “I can’t dance well tonight without taking class. And we both know I need to dance well.” She flashed him a smile. “So deal with it.”

They took an elevator to a private dressing room, secured by Segue away from the other dancers for their protection. Annabella dropped her bag on a chair and started to strip. “Turn around,” she said, but not before he caught a glimpse of her bra, shocking fuchsia lace, as she peeled off a snug sweater in cornflower blue.

He turned, but watched her anyway in the reflection of the dressing room mirrors, hungry like a man at his last meal: Pale, slender body, naked. Raspberry nipples soon covered by a flesh-colored insult to women’s underwear. His gaze roamed down the long, flat flanks of her legs, which dimpled her ass as she bent over, and formed lovely, smooth planes to her knees. A swell at her calves tensed as she found what she wanted in her bag and stood. Beauty.

“Custo!” Annabella complained, though she smirked as her chest and face swept with color.
He doesn’t seem mad about this morning,
she thought.

No, he wasn’t mad. Not at her. He was looking for another opportunity.

It was a crime to cover that body with a dingy leotard, black tights, and faded sweats. She grasped some new shiny satin toe shoes and first-aid tape and took off down the hall to a studio. Inside, dancers gripped ballet barres at the walls and freestanding barres lined up in the center of the room. A woman was clapping a perfect, even rhythm to keep time for the dancers.

Custo tapped his earplug as Annabella took her position and joined in the deep squats, what the woman called pliés.