by Alisa Woods
And with a heart-wrenching sadness, I realize this is a thing he does. He’s an angel. He swoops in and saves people who are attacked by vampires or falling from bridges, and he literally breathes life back into them. What he did with me… it was nothing special.
To him.
To me… it was everything.
And this girl—she desperately needs it. That assuages the bitter tang of jealousy that’s welled up in my heart.
He finally releases her, and she steps back, dazed, but no longer trying to flee. “Fear not,” he says gently, even though she’s not going anywhere. “I’ve freed you from the demon which possessed you. You can go forth and sin no more.”
She just blinks and stares at him. And certainly he’s stare-worthy, standing in his white toga gleaming in the moonlight, the perfect male specimen. It makes a strange sense that he would be perfectly beautiful, this heavenly creature that’s saved me. And now her. But the amazement on her face isn’t for his good looks—it’s for how she feels.
I know because I felt it, too.
She flicks a look as if to say, Is this real?
I get that, too. “It’s okay,” I say to her. “You’re not broken. Not anymore.”
Her mouth drops open, and with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, she slowly stumbles backward. Finally, she turns and runs, heading back the way she came when she first ran onto the bridge. In the distance, I see flashing lights headed toward the bridge. No siren, just the lights. The 911 call I placed…
Cassiel turns back to me, and the intensity of his stare stops my breath again. I want to thank him for saving me—three times now? It’s like he’s my personal Guardian Angel, but don’t dare let those words pass by my lips. I don’t want to break the spell where he’s looking at me in a way that’s heating every part of my body. He seems to war with something—it’s written in the twitches of his jaw—but then he suddenly strides up to me, closing the distance between us to practically nothing.
“I have a question for you.” He’s staring into my eyes.
“Yes?” I have no air, so the word comes out as a gasp.
“Not here,” he says, roughly. Then he holds out his hand for me to take.
I don’t even hesitate—I slip my hand into his. He’s hot… as in temperature. His gaze drops down along my body, and I remember I’m half dressed. “Get your clothes,” he says, voice still hushed, then he releases my hand.
I scurry over to get my skirt, which lies in a puddle next to the wall. I slide that on quickly then manage to slip on my shoes. When I look up, he’s standing next to my car with that blazing expression again, like he’s been watching my every move.
I hurry up to him. “Where are we going?” I ask, breathless, my mind blank of possibilities. I have no idea what happens next. But even so, I expect nothing like what he actually does.
Without a word, he places one hand on the trunk of my car, and the other grasps hold of mine. Then suddenly, I feel like everything inside me squeezes…
And the world moves.
Chapter Five
A moment later, we’re in my three-car garage.
The car is parked, just as it would be if I drove it home. Only I didn’t. A fraction of an instant later, Cassiel and I are in my studio, his hand still clasping mine, the moonlight still lighting everything up with a ghostly glow.
I gasp in air, and a shudder rumbles through me.
Cassiel pulls me closer, releasing my hand but steadying me at the elbow and peering at my face with great concern. “Are you all right?”
“Y…yes.” Just having him close to me, touching me, is making me feel like I can’t breathe. That, and the fact that he somehow magically transported to me and my car back to my house.
His touch disappears from my elbow, and he steps back. “I didn’t want to alarm you, but…” He seems to struggle for words, then says, “It seemed unwise to stay on the bridge.”
I just nod. How do you explain to the police that an angel saved you and the jumper you just called in? Answer: You don’t.
“Thank you,” I mumble. My tongue is finally coming untangled. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s moved away, not so overwhelmingly gorgeous right up next to me. Touching me. “You keep saving me.” I lick my lips, and I want to ask—what are you?—but I don’t know if he’ll answer. Or how long he’ll stay. And I don’t want him to just vanish again.
He presses his lips together. Then his gaze flicks to the paintings around my studio.
Oh, God.
“Is that why you keep painting me?” His bright blue gaze is trained hard on me again, watching my reaction. “And in that… state?”
He means the erections all tenting out his toga. Oh, my fucking God… that’s no way to thank the angel who saved you. Three times. “I’m… I’m so sorry.” My hands flutter, as if I can snatch the paintings back out of existence, but then I just clench my hands and force them down to my sides.
He steps closer. “You’re sorry? Sorry you painted them?”
“I’m sorry I…” I flail a hand at the closest one. God, his erection is so prominent under his painted toga. What is wrong with me? “I’m sorry I painted you that way. I mean, obviously, you’re an angel, and you don’t, um… I mean that’s just…” Sweet lord, I can’t even get the words out. But obviously, I was delusional about that part. Cassiel is an angel who goes around saving people, not sporting erections. He gave a Life Kiss to that girl on the bridge, and he doesn’t have a giant boner now. That was just my super repressed sexual need coming out. Heat is drowning my face. Sweet mother of—
Cassiel steps even closer. So close. I can feel the heat rolling off his nearly bare chest. “I’m not an angel,” he says quietly.
The squirming discomfort of having painted him so lasciviously falls away. “What do you mean?” I glance pointedly at his wings. They’re tucked in, so they don’t knock over my easels, but they’re definitely still there. I don’t know what he did with them while he was pretending to be a janitor. Magicked them away, I guess.
A small smile tugs at the corner of Cassiel’s mouth. “I’m an angeling. Half angel.” He steps even closer. “Half man.”
Oh, God. I’m going to start hyperventilating if he keeps talking that way. “I don’t understand.” Which is entirely true.
He smiles more, and the heat of that is pooling between my legs. “My mother was human. My father was an angeling, a half-breed. I’m some kind of mix, although I don’t know the ratio exactly.” His gaze is drawn back to the painting. “I feel my humanity more fully some times than others.” He looks back to me. “I thought that, perhaps, you painting me this way…” He trails off and seems, of all things, nervous.
I frown and have to pull in air because I’ve been holding my breath. “You thought what?”
He drops his gaze and says, “That perhaps you felt lust for me. That was why you drew me this way.”
My mouth works, but nothing comes out. Lust? How could any woman not feel lust around a man like this? Especially one who swooped in and saved her. Repeatedly. But I don’t know the right answer here. This feels… important. And dangerously delicate. “Well, I drew you this way because… well, because that first night in the garage…” God, I’m stumbling. “I thought I remembered you this way. But maybe it was just my lust, imagining that you had… that you were, um, aroused…”
It doesn’t help that his eyes are wide, his attention rapt. “No,” he says, resolutely. “I was definitely… aroused.”
Oh, God. It wasn’t her imagination. But that didn’t mean it was her causing him to tent out… did it? “Was it the Life Kiss?” I ask, carefully. Because he didn’t have the same reaction to the jumper he saved tonight.
His eyes are searching my face. “Yes. And no.” I frown, so he adds, dropping his voice, “It brings me pleasure—righteous pleasure—to smite vampires, to slay demons like possessed you earlier and the young woman tonight, and to bring a beloved human back to the full vibrancy of t
heir shining soul.”
“Beloved?” I’m sure my voice squeaked.
“Oh, yes.” His face softens. Then he reaches out and strokes my cheek with the back of his fingers, seeming to marvel at the touch. I’m struggling mightily not to pant. “My kind—angelkind—was made to love and protect humanity. Sometimes, my human body, well… responds to the righteous pleasure of the Life Kiss as if it is a bodily pleasure. Your kind is so very tempting to us.”
“My kind?” I ask, dazzled with the breathiness in his voice. “You mean humans.”
“Humans, yes.” It’s not my imagination—he’s moving closer again. I can feel it in the heat rolling off his chest. “But not just any humans. Your kind… the kind whose souls shine bright. You have no idea how that affects us.” He’s staring at my lips again.
But he has to be mistaken. “My soul? Shining bright? I’m afraid you might have the wrong girl.” He frowns, but that draws his eyes away from my lips. I’m blinking way too much. “You have to understand…” I really want to say this right. “I haven’t felt anything for a long time. I mean, I have no idea what my soul looks like, but there’s been nothing but this darkness for so long…”
The frown vanishes and a glorious smile takes its place. “I know.”
Now I’m just confused. “But you said—”
He stops me with gentle fingers on my lips. Then he slides them along my bottom lip and seems delighted by this. My knees are threatening to abandon me. I’ve never felt something so erotic in my life. “Let me explain,” he says.
I just nod, trying to stay upright as he explores touching my cheek for a moment before withdrawing his hand. I feel the absence like a physical ache inside me. And my body is flashing heat. I slip off my jacket and drop it on the floor, the heat is so intense.
“I’m on my walkabout,” he says. “That’s where I have to leave my fellow angelings and walk on the earth and prove my virtue.”
“How do you do that?” For a moment, my raging, aching lust for this impossibly beautiful man settles a little, tamed by curiosity.
“Well, it so happens that we’re in the middle of a war—”
My eyebrows rise.
“A war of immortals,” he clarifies. “The forces of light and shadow warring over the fate of humanity… and themselves. Most of angelkind are caught up in it, in one fashion or another. But being on walkabout lets me… experiment. I’m supposed to decide which side I’m on. Am I shadow? Will I remain in the light? If I can test myself against the temptations of the human world and keep my wings, then I can take my vows and return to the war.”
“And this is what you want?” I ask, eyes wide.
“I want to remain in the light,” he says with conviction. “I’ve been all over the city, slaying demonkind, fighting shadow angelings, all the things I was created for. All the things of righteousness. I’m suited for it, I think. And when humans are caught in the middle, it’s an unparalleled pleasure to purge the demons from your soul. To restore it to its God-given splendor.”
“Like when the vampire attacked me.” It’s surreal that I’m standing in my studio talking to an angel—angeling—about an immortal war and vampires. But I vastly prefer it to losing mind, so I’m all in on this. Plus, I’ve seen too much to deny it any longer.
“Yes,” Cassiel breathes out, soft like he’s reliving it. “That Life Kiss was unlike any other I’ve given. I quickly banished your demon—the vampire’s venom hadn’t really taken hold—but there was more darkness that remained. Your soul was withering. Something had broken it. And when I transferred what blessing I had to give, you came to life in my arms. Your soul shone again as if brand new. And I…” He swallowed. “My body… reacted…” He dropped his gaze again. “I’ve never felt a surge of lust like that before. I almost fell from the sin of it.”
Sin? “Cassiel.” I reach for his arm. Holy cow, it’s like hot iron under my fingers.
He sucks in a breath and looks up.
“That is your name, isn’t it?” I ask.
He flinches but nods.
“What you did for me was no sin.” It’s hard to look him full in the face, he’s so beautiful. “You made me feel alive again in a way I haven’t in so long.” I swallow, feeling like I’m peeled wide open. “You didn’t just save me from a vampire. You came along with all your beauty and strength and that Life Kiss… I don’t know anything about angelings, but as a human woman, I couldn’t help responding to that.” I try a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Especially when you keep saving my life.”
His eyes are alive with interest now. “Angelings are different, Rebecca Anne Stollen. I bleed, but I heal with angel power. I have a strength and endurance humans can’t match.”
“You can fly,” I point out with a smile.
His brilliant smile flashes. “I can fly.” It quickly dims. “But I’m susceptible to the seven deadly sins. Vulnerable to their passions in a way that humans are not. And if I succumb to my lust for you…”
I hold my breath. He has lust for me.
“Then I may fall into shadow.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, still breathless. How can this perfectly beautiful man lust after me? It makes no sense. And yet, the look in his eyes… it’s setting every part of me on fire.
“It’s a tormented state.” Cassiel scowls. “Doomed to wallow in sin until I meet my fate. And there is no redemption. Not for shadowkind. Only for angelings in the light.”
“So you can’t…” I swallow down my disappointment. “You can’t be too, er, lustful?”
He bites his lip, and that small motion is killing me. He’s standing so close. My hand is still on his arm. I feel like I could lean into his chest and offer my lips, and he would take them without hesitation. But would I just be dooming him? An angeling who’s snatched me three times from death? That would be a terrible thing to do.
“Maybe,” he finally breathes out. “But maybe not.”
I can’t help the lurch in my heart.
He steps back from me, scrubbing a hand over his face and obviously trying to break the close space between us. “When I first saw you in the arms of that vampire, of course, I had a righteous desire to save you. When my body betrayed how dangerously attractive you would be for me, I was determined to see you safely home… and never cross paths with you again.”
“But you did leave.” I frown. “You disappeared from the garage.”
He shook his head with a small smile. “I cloaked.”
I lift my eyebrows. “You’ve been following me. Ever since the garage.”
“I was only going to see you home.” He flicks a look around the studio. “Then you started painting. Painting me. Painting me aroused.” He runs both hands through his short-cropped light brown hair. “It was as if you were sending me a sign.”
I frown. “A sign that I thought you were hot?”
He looks confused. “Angelings are naturally warm. Our body temperature is higher than humans…”
I’m holding back a smile.
Recognition dawns on his face. “You mean sexually attractive.”
I can’t help it. The smile breaks out. “Yes.”
“Yes. Exactly.” He steps closer again with unexpected fervor. “Forever, it has been an unquestioned truth that angelings could not engage in sexual acts with humans—not without falling. But just as the war broke out, there was one of us who fell in love with one of you… and she managed to stay in the light. She is legend. But if she can work that miracle, then maybe… just maybe… it is possible for others.”
My heart is pounding now. “For you.”
He bit his lip again. “When I saw the paintings, I was so torn, Rebecca. Your soul was shining anew—a new soul, born again! Do you have any idea how alluring that is?”
I didn’t… but I could see it in his eyes.
“I hovered and waited and debated…” He blew out a breath. “The torment of that was a taste of the shadow realm, I fear. Then just
as I resolved to force myself away—for there could be no hope of me controlling myself around you—a demonkind found you again.”
“What?” I am barely tracking all this angel realm stuff.
“Your co-worker,” he explained. “The one who attacked you. I was so focused on you, I hardly scented the demon on him until he already had you in his grasp.”
“Wait… Rick is infected with a demon?”
Cassiel blinked. “Well, no longer, but yes. The demon-infection brings out the vices you’re most susceptible to. That is why he thrust himself upon you.”
My eyes are wide. “Did you use your sword on him?”
He nods. “My angel blade, yes. He will not bother you again. Nor any other. His good and pure heart is restored.”
I tilt my head. “I’m not so sure Rick has a good and pure heart.”
“Well, he does now.”
I can’t help the hiccup of laugh that bursts forth. “You just save everyone, don’t you?”
Then he surprises me by stepping up and taking my shoulders in his hands. “No, that is you.” He exhales, and the heat of his touch is seeping through my thin blouse. “After I had taken care of Rick, I resolved to return here and finally reveal myself. You had already seen me. I couldn’t resist showing you my name. There was no hope for me. Already. But then you ran off and risked your life—all to save a girl you did not know. Do you have any idea what that does to a soul?”
I don’t, not exactly. But I can guess. Because I know how it made me feel. “Does it shine brighter?”
He releases a shuddering breath, and it’s hot on my face. “The pure charity of self-sacrifice to the point of possible death? Of a soul newly shining again? Rebecca,” he breathes and cups my cheek with his hot hand. “You shone with every virtue at once. And then you literally fell into my arms.” He’s so near. His chest is heaving with that labored breathing again as if he’s run a mile. Or I’m turning him on. That runs a delicious thrill through me… that I could have that effect on him. “I’ve never desired something so much in my life,” he says.
