Page 49 of Night in a Waste Land

No, not just a man. She couldn’t have enjoyed it if she was offering herself up to justa man.

This was Lance. Lance who wanted her, Lance who’d saved her tonight. Who had looked at her with such longing, and, tonight, such care.

She raked her blunt nails down the back of his neck, slipped beneath the collar of his shirt to feel the warm, flexing muscles of his back. He wasshaking.

“God,” he breathed between kisses. He skimmed damp lips down her cheek, kissed her jaw, the tender skin in front of her ear. “God, Rose…” He sealed their mouths together again, his tongue plunging deep.

Her legs had fallen open, somehow, and he settled heavy between them. When his hips kicked, an involuntary thrust, she felt the bulge hardening behind his fly.

Rose dug her nails into his skin and hooked her leg around his hip, lifting into that first thrust, inviting another. Heat bloomed beneath her skin, between her legs; she could feel herself growing wet, was gasping against his mouth, breathless between deep, drugging kisses. God, he was a good kisser; she was drowning in it.

His hand shifted up, and covered her breast – and then he stilled, and his head lifted.

“No,” she protested, hand sliding to his neck, trying to pull him back down to her.

His face hovered above hers, his eyes closed, his lips swollen and shining. His lashes were very long, she noticed for the first time. She’d told him he looked like he beat people up for a living, but he really was beautiful, a carved Apollo come down off his marble pedestal.

She touched his face, felt the tension in his jaw. “Lance.”

A hard shudder moved through him at the sound of his name. His eyes opened, arousal and pain warring in their depths. “You don’t want me.”

“I do.”

“Right now, maybe. But you’ll regret it, after.”

“No, I won’t.” She felt her brows drawing together, knew she was frowning, and saw a fleeting smile touch his mouth.

“I’m nothim, Rose. I know you want him.”

“If you’re saying you think I’m pretending right now, you’re wrong.” She traced the hard line of his cheekbone with her thumb. “There’s no mistaking you for him, not in any way.”

He blinked at her.

“I love Beck more than anything” – she swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and pressed on – “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you, or that I wish you were him. Give me the credit that I can make my own choices.”

He sat back on his heels, though, shaking his head. “I want you to be sure.”

“I am,” she insisted.

Someone knocked on the door.

They regarded one another a long moment. There was no going back from this, she knew, and she didn’t want them to anyway. She’d been celibate for a long time, but now that she’d had a taste, she wanted more. And he was wrong: she did want him. Not sex in general. God knew Gavin would have a go at anyone offering; there were places she could go, particular houses where the right password and some cash would buy you a whole night with whatever you fancied.

But she wanted Lance.

“I want you to be sure,” he repeated, adjusted his pants, and got to his feet.

Rose sighed and sat up.

The door opened, and Gallo poked his head in. “We got word from the helo. ETA’s five minutes.”

~*~

Leaving felt wrong, with the town in an uproar, and Mayor Bixby most likely in danger. But handling the fallout wasn’t the sort of thing Rift Walkers were deployed to handle. Resource officers and foot soldiers would be sent in, Lance assured her – and all of them. As their helo lifted off, she saw the headlights of troop transport vehicles below, heading into town, and she felt a little less shitty about killing a whole town’s god and then abandoning them all.

She didn’t regret the killing itself, though.

Raphael. She turned the name over in her mind while she showered back at base. An archangel, she knew, like Gabriel. Though he’d gone about gaining power in a more subtle way.

---