“Do you—did you find me attractive?” I ask. “My former body—Simone?” Reed just stares at me, clearly reluctant to answer. “I’m not looking for compliments.” My words come out in a rush. “I need to know what about me made you want to help me so that I can try to replicate it in my next life.”
“I did—” he closes his eyes as he misspeaks, “—I do—” he opens them, “—find you attractive.” I could lose myself in his green eyes.
“Me too. I’m attracted to you, too.” I’m so glad I don’t have a body. If I did, I’d be blushing.
“I promise you, if you’re anything like you are now, I’ll want to help you.”
“You like what I looked like?”
“It’s more than that. I’m attracted to your radiance…not just your beauty, it’s you.” He places his hand over his heart. “It’s as if there is an invisible string wound around my heart and you control its beat—with a look—with a gesture. I feel the mark of you here.” His finger traces his skin above his heart. “But there’s nothing there.”
“The sensation is more like butterflies for me.”
“Oh, I have those, too,” he admits. “They threaten to consume me.”
“What should I do when we meet?”
“Just be you. I’ll be unable to resist you.”
I stare at him. “Be…me?”
“It’s rare for me to notice humans anymore. I go out of my way not to see them, but I couldn’t help seeing you. You smile and I feel as if I’m living on the edge of Paradise. There is no one like you, Simone. You are unique. I will always notice you.”
Atwater returns from outside, his blond hair soaked again with rain. He calls to us above him. “A Reaper has arrived outside, her name is Suni. She’s here to help Simone ascend. It’s time for you to leave, Reed.”
Reed nods and folds in his dark wings. He drops to the stone floor below, landing on his feet. I have the most peculiar feeling. It’s as if I’m losing my heart as he walks away toward Atwater. I call to him, “Why does it suddenly feel like the end of the world, Reed?” I fight the urge to go with him.
He pauses. He turns back to me, his smile radiant. “It’s not the end. It’s just the beginning, Simone. It’s the beginning of us.”
I open my eyes to Reed’s breathtaking green ones. My head is in his lap. He stokes my long hair, smoothing it away from my brow, just as he’d done for me when I was Simone. He exhales in relief when he sees me focus on his face. “Love, you’ve come back to me,” he whispers. Leaning down, his lips skim mine. Primitive hunger awakens inside me. I return his kisses, drawn in by the soft glide of his bottom lip. All too soon, he straightens to look at me. Touching my cheek with the back of his hand, he caresses it lovingly.
I stare at him, unable to speak. My eyes blur and cloud with tears that I can’t see past as my bottom lip quivers. He’s a virtual stranger to me in terms of the hollowness of time we’ve spent together. I hardly know him at all. He barely knows me, and yet, he’s become such an essential part of me. An all-consuming ache squeezes my heart, contorting it with indescribable anguish. No matter what I do now, I’ll lose Reed. If we fail to kill Emil and Byzantyne, we cease to be. If we manage by some stunning twist of fate to beat all the odds and accomplish our missions, we lose one another. Reed will be called back to Paradise as part of the deal I made. I don’t know what will happen to me, but I know Heaven. I know they’ll never take me out of the fray here while I live. I knew that going in. Once I accepted my role as an archetype being, there was no going home until my angelic body dies and my soul ascends. I am their pawn for life here.
Covering my eyes with my hand, I feel the burn of tears in them. I thought I could save this stranger who, on a whim, had rescued me from Emil. But I didn’t know—I didn’t see that I would come to love him so desperately—would need him more than I’ve ever needed anyone or anything.
I sit up, tears falling onto my cheeks. Crawling onto Reeds lap, I wrap myself around him, burying my face in the hollow between his shoulder and his throat. I choke back a sob. He wipes a tear from the edge of my jaw. “Shh…Evie, it’s okay. Tell me what happened. What did you find out?”
I shake my head. My throat burns with unshed tears. I kiss his neck then trail my lips along his jaw. Claiming his mouth, I recklessly stroke his tongue with mine. A groan of desire emits from him. Reed’s arms encircle me. He rubs his strong hands up my back touching the soft material of my sweater. His palms slip beneath the fabric to set fire to my skin. He guides my top over my head. I lift my arms from him only long enough to help, and then my hands are on his arms, pulling his shirt off over his head. I toss it away, uncaring where it falls. Running my palms over his shoulders, my urgent fingers warm from the contours of his skin. I move them up to his nape and splay my fingers in his hair. Reed’s nose grazes my neck. It has an incendiary effect, scorching my angelic flesh with wild sensation. My fingers tighten in his hair. I lean into his kisses, my senses raw. “I love you,” I whisper. “I always will.”
Reed rises from the floor with me in his arms. My legs wrap around his waist. He holds me, his hands cupping my bottom as his wings unleash from his back in a whoosh. Mimicking the extension of his feathers, mine unfurl and spread out, a red sunset against the dark night of his wings. I cling tighter to him, knowing that one day soon he’ll be taken from me. “I am yours, Evie—yours and no other’s until the end of time.” His powerful wings slice through the air. He flies forward until my back is forced against the wall. Far from being hurt by the impact, pleasure rushes through me at the contact against my wings.
His chest presses against mine. Raising one hand to my wing, his fingers curl in my feathers, a fragmenting ache of desire surges inside me. His cheek grazes mine. My body reacts, becoming dewy at my savage need to be possessed by him. He tears a red feather from me. Holding it between his fingers, he runs the silky tip over the flesh of my throat. A soft moan slips from me, making me suck in my bottom lip. Trailing the plume lower over my curves, my skin quivers from his relentless torture.
“Reed,” I breathe his name. The feather floats from his hand. His arm around my waist lifts me from the wall as he pops open the top button of my jeans. His hand slides over my bottom, pushing the denim and lace from me. I lean into him, finding his earlobe. I nip it between my teeth before sucking on it. His body tenses. His sharp intake of breath is followed by a desperate groan. He starts speaking to me in Angel, “It’s impossible sometimes not to touch you.”
“I need you to touch me, Reed. I need you to never let me go,” I whisper in Angel as I undo his belt. I suffer the loss of his skin against mine for a moment as he leans back so he can see my eyes.
“You spoke Angel.” His mouth curls into a heart-stopping smile.
My blood hums in my veins. I hunger with a potent ache for him. “I gave you a stolen heart, Reed,” I confess in Angel.
Reed loses his smile as his body stills. “Stolen?”
My eyes grow shiny again with unshed tears. “I’d given my heart to someone else before you. How could I know you’d be everything to me, Reed?”
“You’re my air, Evie. Without you, I drown in breathless sky.” He peels the rest of our clothing from us; his lips find mine once more. Dissolving into feverish intoxication, I vaguely realize that Byzantyne may have been right about something. Reed may truly be the one to shatter my heart and destroy me forever.
I don’t want to move. I don’t want to tell him what I saw. We’d found one of the guest rooms on the fourth floor. We managed to destroy most of it. Only one lamp is left unbroken, but the lampshade is askew. Reed leisurely strokes my hair, waiting for me to work up the courage to explain everything to him. I don’t know how. There are no right words. Words are feeble. My mind works franticly, trying to figure out a way to win and still keep Reed. If I kill Emil, I lose Reed. If I don’t kill Emil, Emil kills me—I’m dead and I lose Reed. It’s a catch-22. And then there is Xavier, and all of the dangerous feelings that no
w radiate through me for him.
I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my aching forehead. An unwanted tear slips down my cheek. Hastily, I scrub it away with the back of my hand. “It’s that bad?” Reed asks.
“Yeah, it’s that bad,” I murmur.
“Can you talk about it?”
“No.”
“Can you show me?” I move my cheek over his chest so I can see his eyes better. He raises his eyebrows. “Can you send me a clone of you? One that contains the memory of what happened in your past?”
I look away from him for a moment, thinking. Sitting up, I face him, pulling the sheet with me. “Okay. I’ll try.” Concentrating, I begin by remembering playing the piano as Simone with Emil behind me while Emil’s men were murdering the staff. I try to incorporate every detail up to the point where Suni, the Reaper, helped me to ascend from my life as Simone. The room spins. Light glows from me as I appear to be cut in half. A radiant image of me launches out of my body. Without far to travel, she enters Reed in a split second, disappearing inside of him. He glows for a moment as he absorbs the memory I sent to him. My emotions ravish him. He grimaces, unaccustomed to the intensity of my raw humanity. Or maybe it’s what he’s seeing that makes him flinch.
“You’re my champion,” he assesses. This strong, virile Power doesn’t know what to make of that.
“As you are my champion,” I reply.
“I thought…” his voice is hollow, “…I convinced myself after we met in Crestwood that we were meant to be—that you’re the love of my life. I couldn’t have been more right—” he laughs self-effacingly, “—and I couldn’t have been more wrong. You are the love of my life. I’m just not the love of yours.”
“Reed,” my voice breaks.
The look he gives me is one of despair. “Do you remember him?”
“Xavier?” I ask. He nods. I can’t look in his eyes, so I look up at the ceiling. “There’s so much time…when I think back…I can’t see a time or a memory without him in it.”
“You’re still in love with him and I’m still in love with you.”
“I came here to find you, Reed—”
“I found you. I didn’t slaughter you because I love you.”
“When we finish this, you’ll get to go home to—”
“Then we finish it.” He turns away from me, shifting me off of his lap. He swings his legs to the edge of the bed. Rising from the mattress, he walks from the bedroom.
“Wait!” I drag the rumpled sheet with me as I scramble off the bed and follow him. I pull my wings inside me so the sheet fits snug.
“You don’t have to say anything. I know how it is.” He’s already up the stairs and in the library room at the top of the house.
Rushing through the doorway, I find him buttoning his black pants. He picks up his shirt off the floor and retracts his wings into his back. “Then you know I don’t want to finish this!”
“Why not?” he asks, all business now. He’s acting like the Reed I first met at Crestwood and it’s scaring me. “It’s what you asked for, right? We kill your inescapable and his wicked guardian and you and Xavier are together for eternity.”
“That’s not what I want!”
Reed balls up his shirt. “No? Did I miss something?” His handsome mouth twists with anger. “I thought you made it all clear in your negotiations.”
“It’s what Simone wanted! It’s not what I want! I’m not her anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” he says cuttingly, “if you’re not Simone, then who are you?”
“I’m me, Reed!” I put my palm to my chest and pat it. “I’m Evie! I’m not just a soul anymore! I have this angel body!” I hold up my hand, letting him see the angel shine of it. “I have fire inside of me.” Opening my hand palm up, I ignite a ball of fire in it. “Simone is only a small piece of me! She may still love Xavier, but Evie—me—I love you, you stupid angel!” I let the fire go out in my hand. “You have no idea what losing you will do to me, do you?” I turn away from him.
His voice is rough as he says, “I’m not stupid. I’m stubborn and I’m not going anywhere without you.”
My shoulders round. “You won’t have a choice. It’s part of the bargain. You ascend if we win. Period.”
“Not if we win—when we win.” I feel Reed’s arms wrap around my waist from behind. “And you don’t know for sure what will happen when we do.” His voice resonates through me like sex.
“I do know,” I whisper, leaning back against him. I may be a new being, but I’m also ancient and I know how things work.
“Heaven could allow you to ascend with me.”
“Reed, they’ll never allow me to come with you.”
Reed places his hand on my chin, turning me in his arms to face him. “You’re my aspire. I’m not leaving here without you. We’ll end Emil and Byzantyne, and then they’ll have no reason to keep you here.”
“If we win, I’m here until something kills me,” I murmur. “You know it as well as I do.” He knows I’m right. I’ve traded places with him. He knows Heaven will never call me back as long as I live and can fight for them.
“You asked for a love of your own choosing. You could choose me.” Could I choose him? Could I deny him Heaven? It’s the only thing he had ever wanted before he found Simone broken on the floor of the carriage house.
My hand reaches out and touches his cheek. “I do choose you. You’re everything to me. It’s your wings that are branded into my flesh, Reed,” I say, tugging the sheet lower, exposing the binding mark of his wings above my heart. “I chose you.”
“There is no heaven without you, Evie. I cannot say it any plainer than that.”
“So we fight?”
“We fight and we win.”
And then we say goodbye, I think, because I know it’s true and my heart bleeds because of it, but aloud I say, “We win.”
Reed leans down near my ear, “This is the beginning of us. I won’t give up. Not ever.” He nuzzles my earlobe. The seductive feel of his body pressing to mine is almost more than I can take. He loosens the sheet around me. His fingertips trace my skin, but his hand stills as a golden light bursts into the room in the form of Russell.
The clone of my soul mate slows when he nears us. His brown eyes, although made of light, shoot daggers at us. “Seriously, Red? I’ve been worried ‘bout you since you left Crestwood and now I find you two goin’ at it.” He throws a disgusted look at Reed. “What happened to ‘Wait for Evie, she’ll contact you’? Meanwhile, you two are gettin’ freaky and I’m a mess ‘cuz I can’t find either of y’all. So thanks! Thanks a lot for that!”
“I’m sorry, Russell—”
“You should be!” he retorts.
“Did Phaedrus locate you?” Reed asks, holding me at his side.
“Yeah,” Russell replies, “he told me he saw you. He said Tau wants peace with you. Is that true?”
“Peace is a subjective term. He wanted me to kill Atwater and retrieve the boatswain we discussed…peacefully.”
“Did you do it?” Russell asks, looking troubled.
“No. I didn’t kill Atwater. He slipped into a portal.” Reed leaves out the part about us having the whistle that opens Sheol. I shoot Reed a sidelong look. He acknowledges my question, answering me with a squeeze to my upper arm that says ‘don’t tell him’. I know that Atwater told me not to tell anyone except Reed about us having the boatswain, but this is Russell—my soul mate. I trust him with everything. Still, I don’t speak of it. Russell doesn’t seem to notice our omission.
“Good,” he says with a look of relief, “I’m glad you didn’t kill him. Anya told me Atwater is my guardian angel. I have to find him. He has a ton of explaining to do.” I search my mind and I know it’s true. Atwater is Russell’s guardian angel, but he hasn’t always been. Russell used to be guarded by a Cherub name Tulie, but Byzantyne stabbed her to death only a few lifetimes ago. Russell wasn’t the same after losing Tulie. He loved her. My soul mate doesn’t notice my compl
ete shock as he continues on. “Okay, what I’m ‘bout to say is gonna sound really stupid comin’ from me, especially given our history with the Gancanagh, but I need y’all to hear me out—”
Reed holds up his hand, palm out. “We need to parley with Brennus because he has a Faerie weapon that will annihilate Evie’s inescapable’s soul. Without that weapon, we can’t kill Emil.”
Russell’s clone blinks—his image straightens up to a taller height. “That’s freaky, Reed. You’re freaking me out.”
“Russell may not know him as Emil, Reed,” I explain. “They never met in Simone’s lifetime. Russell, Emil is Ronan…Ionia…Tasha…Zanzibar—”
“Djet,” Russell whispers our enemy’s name. “You remember.”
“I do, Iah.” For a few moments, my lifetimes with my soul mate spread out in a tapestry before me. I am nearly crushed by the weight of it. In human form, Russell was always the one I wanted. Nothing and no one came between us. When I died and my soul detached from my human form, things were different. I remember everything—I was in love with my angel in Heaven, Xavier. I would do anything for my Seraph guardian, even forget him over and over and die for my angel a thousand times, and then a hundred thousand more, just for a few moments together with him in Paradise when it was allowed—when Russell still lived on Earth and I was in Heaven. I shake my head. There are so many broken pieces of me.
Russell’s clone comes closer to me, his light falling on my face. “I have a dagger that Brennus gave me. If I cut myself with it, it will bring Brennus to me. I can’t use it though. I won’t use it. I can’t allow the Gancanagh to get close to Anya or the Reapers again. We need to meet up. You have to go with me to talk to Brennus. He’ll listen to you. He’ll do anythin’ for you.”
“Of course he will. I’m his queen.” Both Reed and Russell frown. “I am his queen. I have to lead his army into battle against Emil. Brennus will give me whatever I ask for, but even if he doesn’t, I could take it from him just as easily.”
Iniquity (The Premonition Series Book 5) Page 23
