Really? Claiming the guy? I was being too forward.
Breaking the kiss, I stepped away, smoothing my hands down my dress. “Whew! Sorry about that.”
He touched his lips and shrugged. “Sorry for what? I liked it. Did I do it wrong?”
“Not at all.”
His brows fell and his mouth pouted. The puppy dog had been denied a treat.
Shame on me. Libby St. Charles was not the denial sort. Be damned this too-forward business. I tended to take what I desired, and if it made me feel good, I’d overindulge.
“All righty then, here goes nothing, lover boy.”
This time I dashed my tongue across his, coaxing him to a sensual dance that teased at my inhibitions like a feather tracing me from head to toe. Every part of my skin craved contact with his. Clothing felt bothersome. And when I wanted him to dip me backward and make me his, the man simply took what I gave.
So I would become the teacher. He would learn, and then take the control I wanted him to own.
Sliding my hands down over his, I moved them lower on my hips. Reichardt squeezed and I moaned into his mouth. “You squeeze all you like, lover.”
“So much of you to enjoy,” he murmured, and this time he initiated the kiss.
He pressed my body against the counter and probably wasn’t aware how hard he leaned into me. I didn’t care. I wanted to be controlled by a man, needed it. His mouth, firm and seeking, tasted my lips and a murmur of satisfaction was my reward for this teaching session. I loved every moment of this connection, even his awkward movements as he tilted his head one way and then the other.
And when I felt his erection harden and lengthen against my mons—oh, baby. Did I mention I was a master of overindulgence?
“Uh...” Breaking the kiss, Reichardt looked down at his groin. “I’m not sure...”
“That’s supposed to happen,” I said sweetly and traced his moist lower lip with my finger. “That means you’re doing things right.”
“It’s so...hard. I feel as if I want to...”
I lifted a brow, waiting for him to list his fantasies about me. I could ramble off a salacious litany for him. But one step at a time. It was going to be difficult to control my urges around this man.
“I need a moment to myself.” Reichardt dashed out of the kitchen and through the swinging French doors.
Turning to the flower petals in the sink, I whistled a tune about two lovers finding one another. The former soul bringer had never had sex. I had myself a two-thousand-year-old virgin.
And I had so many great plans for him.
Two
While I dressed, Libby waited out in my starkly furnished living room. She was an early bird, or so I’d heard that expression in the market the other morning as we’d shopped for milk and bread and the apricot jam I enjoyed.
I liked to linger in bed, tucked between the sheets that smelled like cedar. If I wasn’t so compelled to become a useful, working part of society, I could entirely imagine becoming a bum who slept and ate his way through life.
I noticed the blue feather lying on the floor before the bed and picked it up. When I moved my fingers over the vanes, they shivered as if liquid yet felt cold and hard like iron. It was my feather. Libby said she’d found it in the pile of crystal ash that had remained after my wings had shattered and fallen away.
“Wings,” I murmured. “Could I get them back?”
I flexed my shoulders and spread out my arms, wondering what wings must have felt like. How large had they been? What purpose might they have served in the mortal realm? Had they been blue like this feather?
I overheard Libby out in the living room, on the phone with her sister, chatting about everything from cleaning solutions and getting blood stains out of vinyl couches to the latest music and—me.
My ears perked, my arms dropping the imaginary wings.
“He’s doing well. Still pretty weak. I wonder if he’ll always be so? He’s the muscles of a workhorse, but he can barely lift the vacuum.”
I clasped my hands across my chest, inadvertently squeezing a bicep. The muscle was hard, and it seemed I should be stronger. It bothered Libby that I couldn’t do some things? Hell, I’d needed her to help me move around the sofa. Shouldn’t a man be able to do that himself?
“Yes, he’s adjusting. CJ did that? I couldn’t imagine Reichardt lifting a washing machine to let me get to the dust beneath.”
I winced. Indeed, I needed to become stronger to gain Libby’s admiration. I’d seen the commercials on the television that featured muscle-bound men lifting heavy weights. Women swooned over them.
A man of my stature and with all these muscles shouldn’t be so weak. It had to do with transforming from a soul bringer to a mortal, I felt sure. If I had once traveled from Above and Beneath, I must have had some crazy powers. And Libby had detailed how I’d once lifted CJ and Vika with no more than my mind and had speared them with an invisible bolt that had left them bleeding.
I’d been a cruel man. But I’d also been strong.
I wanted to win Libby’s respect. I just had to figure out how.
* * *
After hanging up with my sister, I waited for Reichardt to finish dressing. The man shouldn’t cover up those washboard abs, but okay, so it was autumn and raining, and—still. It hurt my sense of wanting to drool over man muscle, but I’d have to deal. The man preferred all black clothes because he said putting colors together hurt his brain.
Boys. Gotta love ’em.
After he’d gotten his soul—and before his memory of being a soul bringer had been completely vanquished—Vika and I had quickly learned Reichardt kept an apartment in the fifth quarter, in the shadow of the Jardin des Plantes, and discovered it was empty: no furniture, no food, not even clothing. Just a few odd items sitting on windowsills and counters. The blue feather, a half-full bag of cat food, a yellow-cloth Jewish badge and a live sansevieria plant that looked well cared for.
We’d also learned the entire nineteenth-century building belonged to Reichardt. The building manager had explained their beneficent owner hadn’t charged rent in over two decades. The elderly building residents, upon seeing Reichardt, had offered a “bonjour, Monsieur Reichardt,” and one had told me that while the stoic building owner never chatted, he always ensured the residents were well through a liaison who visited them monthly to check medical stats and ensure their bills were paid, and who also sent food when needed.
I strolled my fingers along the glossy blade leaves of the sansevieria plant now. Quite the fellow, my emotionless and uncaring soul bringer.
We’d decided Reichardt should remain at his place, because when I had suggested he move in with me, he couldn’t get around the idea of it being sinful if we were not married. The man’s morals were old-fashioned yet sweet, and I didn’t want to rush him into the twenty-first century too quickly.
That sounded good in theory, anyway.
“Ready!” He looked over my black-and-white polka-dotted dress and skimmed his fingers along the fringes that hemmed the skirt.
“It’s my rock-star dress,” I said, tilting out a hip and hooking a hand akimbo. I could work a fringe like nobody’s sister.
“But you’re not a rock star. Or are you? You’re so talented—perhaps I’ve not seen all that you can do.”
“No, lover boy, I am not a rock star. But sometimes you gotta put on the fringe and rock out, you know?”
“No.” He eyed me curiously.
Poor