by Ellis,Alysha
He smiled. “You won’t take it off. You promise?”
She lifted one shoulder. “If that’s what you want. I promise.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Good.”
He helped her tidy herself up, but nothing could disguise the rosy flush on her cheeks. She just had to hope that her staff wouldn’t notice, or if they did they wouldn’t ascribe it to the right reasons.
She walked with him back into the lab and made a point of speaking in a calm, controlled manner, praying desperately she didn’t sound like the kind of woman who played with gorgeous men and sex toys in her office. “Thank you for dropping by to see where I work. Have a safe trip home.”
Peter winked at her. “Oh, I’m not going home for an hour or two yet. There are a lot of lonely people in this hospital and I thought I’d spend some time visiting and talking.”
Ellie gave a faint smile. “That’s very kind of you.”
They’d reached the door and she stopped to watch him go. It had been exciting, but it was much more relaxing without him. She was just returning to work when Peter stuck his head back around the door. In his hand he held up a small black box.
His lips curled upwards. “Oh, and Ellie…it has a remote. Have fun.”
And with that he strode off towards the stairs, leaving Ellie staring after him in stunned disbelief.
She took two steps towards her office. If she ripped the damned thing off and threw it into the rubbish, who would ever know? The cleaners for a start. And she had promised Peter she’d leave it on. Of course, she didn’t know then that vibrators came with remote controls.
And she hadn’t realised how much fun being a little bit wicked could be. Besides, Peter was probably out of wireless range. She squared her shoulders and got back to work.
Five minutes later she gasped.
Sarah looked up at her. “Are you alright?”
Ellie surreptitiously squeezed her legs together and bit her lip. She swallowed and managed a strangled reply. “I’m, ah, fine, I just, er, bit my tongue.”
“It must have hurt.” Sarah’s voice was concerned. “Because you’ve gone all red.”
The buzzing between her legs stopped and Ellie took a deep breath. “I’m fine. It was just a momentary shock.”
For the next two hours, every twenty minutes or so, the vibrations started and continued for just long enough to keep her in a constant state of arousal.
By the time she was ready to leave work, her knees were weak, her pulse was racing and she was in a fever of need.
Chapter Four
Anticipation rose as Ellie opened her front door. Her heartbeat fluttered.
Excitement turned to irritation when she checked in every room of the house and couldn’t find Peter. She walked outside and checked the garden. When she caught herself checking under large bushes, she spun on her heel and stomped back inside, irritated at herself and her neediness.
Self-annoyance didn’t in any way diminish her concern. Surely he couldn’t have done what he did to her, then just taken off? For the next hour she paced, fumed and fretted. When the door finally swung open, she flew at him. “Where have you been?”
Peter’s calm face showed no reaction to the anger crackling in Ellie’s voice. “I stayed at the hospital. Someone needed me.”
“I needed you.”
His golden, honeyed voice surrounded her. “But someone needed me more. I came as soon as I could.”
She’d come home, eager, aroused, frantic for him and he wasn’t here. Now he was calmly telling her some stranger’s needs came before hers. She had looked for him. The empty, sick feeling she’d had when she couldn’t find him made her…angry.
“You can’t know what a total stranger wants.”
His hands gently massaged her tight shoulders. “Ellie, I know when someone’s mind is distressed. I wouldn’t be much use as a counsellor in Heaven if I didn’t know what emotions I was dealing with.”
Ellie tensed, undoing the beneficial effect of the massage. “Can you read… No wait, do you think you can read my emotions?”
“Yes. Your predominant emotion is fear.”
A fierce frown creased Ellie’s forehead. “You’re wrong. I am angry that you weren’t here and I didn’t know what had happened to you. I’d be angry if I thought you could read my thoughts but I am not afraid. ” She could hear the aggression in her voice, but felt no guilt. Her thoughts were private. She didn’t want anyone, angel or human, knowing what went on in her mind.
Peter raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
It was the silence that got to her, made her want to explain, elaborate. “Look, I’m just annoyed. I kept that thing on, I was looking forward to some fun and you weren’t here.”
Peter slipped his hands down towards his pocket. “I’m here now.”
Ellie slapped his hand away and reached in and pulled out the remote. “Give that thing to me. I’m not in the mood anymore.”
Peter shook his head sadly. “Plans change. People adapt. The world doesn’t have to be scheduled. You don’t have to control everything and everyone around you.”
Ellie snapped. She poked a sharp, accusatory finger into his chest. “That’s utter rubbish. If I’m such a control freak, how do you explain your presence here? Where does taking in a naked man who appeared on my doorstep fit into your notion that I need complete control?”
Peter folded his arms. He looked down at the finger still pushing against the hard muscles of his chest. Then he looked back at Ellie’s face.
Under his calm, considering gaze, she became conscious of the heat in her cheeks, of the tightness of her lips and the tension she suddenly realised she carried constantly in her shoulders. She began to pull her hand away, but he captured it and held it gently.
“I think I fell to your doorstep for a reason, Ellie. The Boss does know everything after all, and I think He knew you needed me. And since I was going to fall anyway…” Peter smiled his awe-inspiring smile again. “Well, here I am.”
This time it was Ellie who shook her head. “That might explain it to you, although I can’t imagine He—” She stopped and looked up nervously. “I really can’t believe He caters to the kind of need I have for you.” She shrugged off her trepidation and got back to the core of the argument. “It isn’t relevant anyway. It doesn’t explain why I hauled you into my house in a totally unpredictable, non-control-freak kind of way. You can’t explain that, can you?” Although she resisted the urge to tack on a nyaah-nyaah,nyah-nyah-nyaah, she knew it was there in her tone.
“Ellie, I’m an angel. Of course I can explain it. One, as you so correctly suggest, you did have needs. Needs a naked man was exactly designed to fulfil. Two, you have other needs I can take care of whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. Three, it was your birthday so you were in a, shall we say, receptive state of mind. Four, well, never mind four. You’re just starting to calm down.”
For someone who claimed to be able to read emotions, it was an extremely stupid thing to say. Even Ellie, who didn’t have much ability to read other people at the best of times, could see that. How else was she supposed to react other than to recover her hand and put her forefinger to good use again? She poked him, hard. “You have less than one second to start explaining. Number four reason is…? This had better be good.”
The compellingly confident angel receded, to be replaced by the bewildered man who had been startled by his own body. His mouth curved up in an unsure little grimace, nothing like his usual million watt glow. “Um, I don’t think you really want to know.”
She tapped her foot and folded her arms and huffed out a very expressive breath.
He got the message. “Okay, you do want to know. I may have to, er, start the story a little time before I fell to earth.”
She pursed her lips.
He sped up the pace. “Guardian angels have a job to do. They protect their charges.”
“But you’re not a guardian angel. Is this relevant?”
>
“Yes, it is relevant. To protect their charges, guardian angels have special powers. Counselling angels have a job to do too. We have to reconcile our charges to their new position in Heaven, help them overcome their sense of loss and grief. So we have to have powers as well.”
Ellie didn’t like where this was going. Her eyes narrowed. “Spit it out.”
“Obviously, a guardian angel’s powers would be pointless if they only worked in Heaven. Their powers have to work on Earth. Even though a counselling angel would never be expected to work outside Heaven, the rules hold for our powers as well. It appears my power has stayed with me.”
“It appears? Exactly what does ‘it appears’ mean?”
“You have to understand I didn’t intend this to happen. I was in a totally new situation, was only partially conscious, and calming down distressed people was second nature to me. I’ve been doing it for eons, after all.”
Ellie broke into his frantic stream of explanation. “You used your powers on me! You did some kind of spacey, angel mind-control thing, didn’t you? You got inside my head and you, and you…” Rage made her voice shake so much she couldn’t continue. She wrenched out of his grasp and paced furiously up and down the room. “You bastard. You told me you couldn’t do that. You lying, manipulating…Svengali! What else have you made me do?”
His voice lowered, gentled. He held out his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Ellie, you know I haven’t made you do anything. I haven’t controlled you.”
His voice dropped so low, Ellie couldn’t quite make out what he said, and she wasn’t in the mood to ask him to repeat it. She thought she caught the words ‘shoe’, and ‘other foot’, but this wasn’t the time to let the conversation drift off into matters of dress and accessories.
In any case, he raised his voice back to an audible level. “I calmed you, that’s all. Made you realise there was nothing to be afraid of.”
“I already told you, I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t need you to calm me down.” Her eyes narrowed and she turned a gaze glittering with anger and accusation at him. “Are you trying to do it now? Don’t you dare use your powers, or whatever they are, on me now.”
Peter looked hurt. “I wouldn’t. Not now. You’re feelings are legitimate and need to be worked through. Calming powers are normally only used in those situations where my, ah… client’s feelings are so deep and destructive they prevent healing.”
“Then you had no right to use them on me. Being concerned, not afraid, about a naked man asleep on your doorstop is a perfectly normal response.”
Just for a moment, frustration gave his mellow voice a hard edge. “I told you, I wasn’t fully conscious. It was all new to me too, remember? I didn’t intend to do it. If I’d thought about it, I would have expected to have lost my powers along with everything else. But I didn’t think. I just reacted. I didn’t want you to feel bad or fright…um, concerned.”
“What about Jeanne? What did you do to her? Why did she accept your presence here so easily?”
Confusion clouded the clear blue of his eyes. “Perhaps there is some, I don’t know… emanation? An ability to relax people. Some power that is just part of me, so it stayed even after I lost my wings. Something that has become instinctive after all the ages I have done my job.”
Ellie’s ears pricked up. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned how long you’ve been doing your job. Exactly how old are you?”
Peter rubbed his fingers through his hair, “Exactly? It’s hard to say. Time passes differently in Heaven, and to be honest no one bothers to keep a record of it.”
Ellie shot him an impatient, irritated glance.
He shrugged. “The answer is in the thousands of years. The exact number I don’t know and I doubt if it matters.”
Ellie’s knees sagged. She’d had wild, passionate sex with an angel who was thousands of years old. She felt a little sick and— She cut off that line of thinking. She wasn’t afraid. She was never afraid.
Peter’s hand reached out and stroked her face. Gently he traced down the curve of her cheek, running his finger along her lips, smoothing away the tightness. Then he slid his hand around her neck, under her hair, to stroke away the tension that clamped around her stiff muscles. “It’s okay to be confused, Ellie. It’s okay to be unsure. For both of us. There is a lot to cope with. No one expects you to be able to just shrug it off and carry on as normal. We need to allow ourselves time to get used to this.”
Ellie shivered as Peter’s hand left her neck and began a long glide down her spine to come to rest over her bottom, pulling her in close. Very close.
He whispered in her ear, all hot honey and velvet, “I think it’s time we put it aside and continued my lessons.” His long, wickedly clever fingers slid over the curve of her bum. They detoured down her thighs, moved to the back of her knees. He made a few leisurely circles that sent tingles scurrying up her spine to explode in little bursts of heat deep in her groin.
She moved her hips, trying to find relief for the needs he aroused. Peter took advantage and swooped his hand back up, opening her thighs wider, dragging her skirt up, wriggling his fingers under the elastic of her panties. He pulled away the toy still nestled against her and whispered, “We won’t need that anymore tonight.” He replaced it with his thumb, stroking and rubbing her swollen, hard clit, burying his fingers inside her.
Her muscles collapsed. Only the clench of his probing fingers held her upright. The more she sagged into that knowing hand, the more it drove her. Harder. Hotter. Until she could take no more of it and she came, giving herself up to the flooding pulse.
She sagged into him, plastering herself against him from chest to knees, her forehead slumped against his shoulder. His arm at her back held her close, his hand between her thighs still held her up.
His words washed, hot and soft, against her ear. “Okay. That was revision. Now, how about we move on to some new content? Advanced, new content.”
She nodded. At least she sent the message to her brain, but it didn’t seem as if her muscles had any intention of obeying.
The slight movement of her forehead against his shoulder was apparently enough. Peter bent down, swept his arm beneath her knees and carried her into the bedroom.
He let her fall gently to the bed. He knelt on one knee beside her. “More. Teach me more. Tell me what more I can do to please you. Show me.”
He tugged at her clothing. She squirmed and wriggled and twisted until she was naked, spread out before him. His breath washed over her, heavy and hot. “You are the most beautiful creature, Ellie.” He reached out and ran his hands over her breasts. His cool fingers left burning fire in their wake. His lips followed after, kissing and nibbling and sending the flames deep inside her. His tongue traced damp whorls onto her skin, curling and weaving its way down her body. “So beautiful, Ellie. Tell me what to do.”
He’d asked her that before, the first time, but it was no longer the plea of a man for whom it was all new, all untried. It was the command of a man who wanted her to acknowledge her own needs, who wanted her to embrace the physical desire he aroused in her.
He turned her, pulled her diagonally across the bed and raised himself over her. He took one long, hungry look and dipped his head to feast. His tongue probed her navel. Needles of desire sped along her nerves. She arched her hips, dropped them back onto the bed.
“What do you want me to do, Ellie? Tell me.” He left her navel. Slid a little lower. Then stopped. And waited.
Ellie gathered her thoughts. She was going to have to say something to direct him. She had to be in control.
She let her thighs drop open. Felt the furnace of his gaze as he stared at her. Could feel his attention focus like a laser.
“Tell me what to do.”
“You know, you must know.” Her words were little more than a whisper.
“Tell me, Ellie.” It was a command. “I need to know what you want. Tell me.”
The words were fo
rced from her in short, sharp bursts. “What you do with your fingers. What you do with your cock, do it with your tongue, with your lips, with your teeth.”
Peter’s breath escaped with a hiss of relief. “Yes. You need to say it. You need to talk to me.”
He licked his way down to where she waited for him. Hot. Wet. Ready. He ran his tongue down her centre, parting her, opening her up. She drew her legs up. His body rolled in between them. He lifted her heels onto his back, opening her wider. His teeth scraped lightly along the taut slick surface and nipped at her clitoris, pulsing and throbbing under his attention. The intensity was almost unbearable. Ellie tried to clamp her legs together, but his broad shoulders held her open to him.
Her head thrashed from side to side. Her hips thrust spasmodically upwards into his hard chin and tongue.
He pulled back just a little, panted out a few words. “Like this, Ellie?”
She groaned. “Harder. Faster. More.”
Telling him, directing him excited her. Pushed her closer to the edge. He ground his thumb into her clit. Made a hard push with his tongue that drove him deep into her.
Her hips surged off the bed as the muscles in her legs tensed. She came, rhythmically clenching around his tongue as it continued to thrust into her.
Peter waited for the spasms to subside. He gave her dripping pussy a long, slow kiss and crawled up her body until he reached her mouth. “Can I kiss you here, Ellie? You won’t mind? It won’t be offensive to you, the reminder of what I have done, where I have been?”
Offensive? The smell of her own juices, mixed with the distinctive masculinity that was his alone, was the most erotic aroma she had ever encountered.
It roused her from her sex-sated stupor. She grabbed his head and pulled it down on hers, opened her mouth to accept his tongue, to suck in the taste of their love-making.
She’d never known that a kiss, just a kiss, could have such restorative powers. The desire she’d thought was fully satisfied, roused again. She arched her back into him, felt the rasp of the clothes he still wore. “Take them off. I want you naked, now. I want you naked and in me.”
