Mists of Velvet

her, then pulled her down on top of him.
    “Rhys?”
    “Hmm?” he murmured as he kissed the top of her head.
    “I just want you to know that mortal or not, you make my body sing.”
    He smiled into her hair. “Mates,” he murmured. “My body is supposed to do that to yours, just like you make me completely insane with desire.”
    She snuggled next to him and started to breathe softly and rhythmically. “Go to sleep, mo bandia , because I’m planning on waking you up later. I want to hear your body sing again.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    Cailleach stared at the man who had dared to enter her chamber. She was in bed, her hair down around her naked shoulders and the sheet pulled tight over her naked breasts.
    “You have some explaining to do.”
    The man was not really a man. He was an angel—a fallen one.
    “I owe you nothing,” she hissed.
    He moved so fast that she startled and pressed herself against the headboard. She had sent her oidhche out into the night to spy on the mortal. She was alone, and never had she feared the darkness as she did now, with her old nemesis looming above her.
    “You always were such a stubborn female.”
    Lifting her chin, she gazed deeply into Suriel’s black eyes. “I would not bow to you then, and I will not now.”
    Clasping her chin in his hand, he forced her to look at him. “I should have just taken you. Fucked you and showed you who was the greater power.”
    “Your coarseness sickens me.”
    “You shiver, but I doubt it’s from sickness.”
    Flinging his hand from her, Cailleach pulled the sheet tighter to her body. “What do you want, Suriel?”
    “What we both want. The flame and the amulet.”
    “That’s not all you desire.”
    He smiled, that beautiful fallen face lighting up with mystery and menace; sensuality and sin; pleasure and pain. “You know what I want, Cailleach.”
    “I do not trust you. You’re evil, Suriel.”
    “And you’re not?” His long, tapered finger stroked her cheek and skimmed down her jaw to her shoulder, where he let it trail along her arm. “I know what you did, Cailleach.”
    Alarm seized her, and she met his onyx gaze. “You know nothing.”
    “You parted them.”
    “You do not know what you speak of.”
    He laughed as he brushed his fingers back up the length of her arm. Her traitorous nipple hardened, and his gaze slipped down, focusing on it as it pressed against the sheet.
    “Two tragic, tortured souls,” he whispered.
    “Get out,” she commanded. She was weakening. Her always-strong resolve was slowly unraveling.
    “You led Covetina to Uriel. You fed her to the bastard.”
    “I did not!”
    “Because you wanted Camael for yourself.” He pressed against her, his fingers teasingly resting at the edge of the sheet she clutched to her breasts. “You wear the white of a pure goddess. But you’re not.”
    “You know nothing!” she sneered, hating this angel. Of the three, he had always been the most lethal and dangerous; the most difficult to control. Whom was she lying to? She had never controlled Suriel. Even Uriel, with his dark pleasures and his ambition to learn the Dark Arts, was not as dangerous as the angel before her. There was something so very primal and black inside Suriel. She felt it—the hunger for power; for revenge; for all-consuming satisfaction.
    “When you discovered that Camael loved Covetina,” he said, moving closer so that his breath whispered across her shoulder, “you flew into a rage. In a jealous, impetuous rage, you tore them apart. You banished her. You knew Uriel was no good, that his heart was impure, and still you led him to her. You knew what he would do to her, but you didn’t care. You wanted Camael.”
    Her heart was racing; her breathing fast. He was too close, looming over her, breathing against her.
    “She was your handmaiden. You knew her secrets, that she had mastered the Dark Arts. You knew and didn’t care, because all you desired was Camael. You didn’t care that Camael mourned her. You didn’t care that Uriel would rape her.”
    She couldn’t listen to any more. Tearing the sheet from the bed, she wrapped it around herself and walked away from him.
    “The past has no bearing on what is happening now.”
    He stalked her, pressing her into the shadows, against the wall. “You don’t think so? All misdeeds must be atoned for at some point. Yours. Mine. In Annwyn. In heaven. In the mortal realm. It doesn’t matter where or when. Only that it will