and chest before dipping lower to linger on his hard dick.
“Watch,” he commanded. There was the lightest burning sensation on his skin, and then the push dagger inked on each palm became solid and fell into his hands.
“How do you do that?” Fearless, she came forward, reached out, and stroked both his skin and the short knives.
“Pure willpower.” Even after all these years, he didn’t quite understand how it worked.
“You said you’d never lie to me.”
He willed the small daggers to absorb back into his skin, to become ink once again. “I didn’t. I just didn’t tell you the entire truth.”
It was as though a wall descended between them. Her gaze became shuttered, and her posture shifted from relaxed to on guard. He didn’t like it. Had become used to her being open with him.
He yanked a Viking ax from the wall. “When I was in Hell, I needed weapons. I was always on the move, couldn’t afford to stop for long.” There’d always been demons hunting him.
“I can’t even imagine.” Her tone softened, as did her body. “It was bad enough when I was there for my training, but to be hunted…” She shivered and shook her head. “There are some nasty creatures in Hell, ones I was lucky enough to never see.”
“I saw them all.” As an angel, he’d already fought them, but always with other angels, never alone, until his fall.
“So you found a way to keep your weapons,” she prompted.
He swung the ax. It became an extension of his arm as he went through a series of movements. The familiar exercise comforted him in a way that nothing else ever did. His arm never tired. He could do this forever and never grow bored. There was something about a blade or sword or ax that spoke to him on a visceral level.
A sharp pain in his back shocked him. He stopped with the ax raised above his head. It wasn’t muscular. It was more intense. It was gone as quickly as it had come.
“Everything okay?” Morrigan was sitting on the floor, back to the wall.
“How long have I been at this?”
“Hours.”
…
Maccus was an artist with a blade. The two of them linked in some way that defied explanation.
Any museum curator would have an orgasm just walking into the room. The history of the edged weapon was on display here. And Maccus was a master of them all.
His moods were undecipherable. One second he seemed open, and then next he was closed tighter than Fort Knox. Then he’d started swinging the ax and had fallen into an almost meditative state that was mesmerizing to watch.
Sweat gleamed on his wide shoulders and muscular chest, but she didn’t think he was tired. If anything, practicing with the weapon had seemed to energize him.
The tattoos on his body were deeper and darker.
His back was to her when he returned the ax to its spot on the wall. The black wings seemed to almost lift from his body they were so real. The curved blade between his shoulder blades shimmered.
Then he faced her, this hard-eyed, battle-scarred fallen angel who had somehow managed to touch her heart. It shouldn’t have happened. Wouldn’t have happened in her old life. She’d have taken one look at him and run in the opposite direction.
Now she wanted to pull him to her, to stand at his side and fight the forces that had brought them together. She’d learned over the past decade that there was as much beauty to be found in darkness as there was in the light.
“I don’t know if it was what angel power I had left or if falling into Hell had changed it.”
When he picked up their former conversation as if seconds had passed instead of hours, she slowly stood. Whatever was coming was important.
He stood alone in the center of the room. In the blink of an eye, each hand held a throwing dagger and the skin on his chest where they’d been was smooth and unmarked.