by Amber Morgan
“Can you understand me?” she asked him.
He lifted his head and her heart stopped.
His eyes were inhuman, a fiery amber with pupils like a cat or a serpent, not a man. Tears streaked down his savagely beautiful face, stirring a primal rush of desire and compassion in her. She turned her head, unable to meet his gaze. Humans were never meant to look upon angels. She didn’t know what the punishment was for that sin, but she knew she didn’t want to risk it.
“I understand you,” he said. His voice was as rough as his beauty and for a second it stole her tongue.
She struggled to find it again. “I need to shower you off, clean off the blood,” she said. “Will you let me?”
He shuddered, and she wondered if her touch repulsed him, even hurt him. “Yes,” he said finally. He straightened with a gasp of pain, clutching her shoulder for support. His nails were long and black, and tore through her thin gown like a hot knife through butter. He didn’t seem to notice and Thea didn’t think it mattered. She helped him into the tub and turned on the shower. Lukewarm water cascaded over him and he shuddered again.
“Hotter,” he said. She obeyed, pushing the temperature up. He gasped in a mix of pain and relief, and bowed his head, pressing his hands to the slick tiles.
She watched, entranced, as the water sluiced the blood away. It was darker than human blood, almost black, and as it swirled away down the drain she wondered absently why angels had blood at all. Weren’t they divine creatures, creatures of light and holy fire?
He turned his head and she was caught in his fiery gaze. This time she couldn’t look away. “You are freezing,” he told her.
Yes, she realized, she was. Storm water still dripped from her hair and her ruined nightdress. Her feet were covered in mud and ash. She must look like a maenad, wild and mindless as she stared at him. She nodded mutely.
He reached out to her. Thea placed her hand in his, mindful of his nails, and stepped into the tub with him, her heart pounding madly against her ribs. He turned her so her back was to him and tugged off her ruined gown. He pulled her hard against his chest, his skin exquisitely hot, and he clung to her as though she was an anchor. She felt him quake, wracked with pain, and she wished she could do something to relieve him. His need was a tangible thing, pulsing against her bare back like a heartbeat. She hadn’t been this close to a man since one disappointing summer night with Louis Lee Williams in the back of his pick-up.
That ridiculous thought made her laugh, and the angel clung to her tighter, burying his face in the curve of her neck. She felt his lips moving over her slick skin as he mumbled in that strange, musical language again, and her knees went weak. Was it sexual? Not really. There was too much pain and confusion in him, too much dream-like numbness in her. But it was sensual, achingly so, and Thea couldn’t restrain the moan that escaped her at the feel of his body against hers.
They stood trembling together in the shower until the water ran cold and clean, all the blood washed away. Then he released her, unfolding from her, and stepped out of the tub. Thea followed, unsure what to do with him now. There was no etiquette guide for naked angels. For lack of better ideas, she asked him.
“What now?”
He stared at her, gaze piercing but at the same time, unseeing, as if he looked through her to something beyond. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never planned for this.”
This could mean so many things. The storm, the fall, the shower… She hugged herself, staring at his nude form and wondering why he fell, where his wings were. “Are you in pain?” she asked him.
He closed his eyes. “Yes.”
His voice broke on the word and Thea suddenly knew what to do. She had no precedence for fallen angels, but she knew how to care for a broken person. Her parents taught her that. She pulled a towel from the rail, thick and soft as a summer cloud, and wrapped it carefully around him, just below the wounds on his back. He held it in place, absently stroking the fluffy material with his fingertips. There were no other towels, so Thea pulled her threadbare bathrobe from the door and shrugged into that. It plastered itself to her wet skin, but she forced herself to ignore the discomfort. She held out her hand to him.
“Come on.”
He stared at her for a second, distrust plain on his face, then it passed and he slid his palm into hers. The contact was warm, solid, and she wondered again what gave angels weight and flesh.
She took him into her parents’ bedroom and made him sit on the bed. It was her least favorite room in the house, which was saying something, but she didn’t plan to stay in there. After her father died, his liver burnt out and his heart broken, she’d immediately stripped the room of everything that reminded her of him, and of her mother. Perhaps that was one of the first warning signs for the people of Milton—it was indecent, they said, unseemly, for her to do such a thing with her daddy so fresh in the ground. Thea didn’t care. She wanted to purge the entire house of their presence … but she’d run out of energy after the bedroom.
Where once there had been glossy photos of her mother on stage or film sets, now there were faded patches of wallpaper. The radiant golden girl in those photos was long gone, so why keep the photos themselves? Thea had boxed them up and put them in the attic. Her father’s clothes, his books, his collection of coins, they were all up there too. She’d meant to throw them out, or at least sell the coins, but once they were out of sight, they’d gone out of mind. Now the bedroom was simply another empty room in the empty house, devoid of personality but somehow still full of phantoms.
She switched on the bedside lamp, casting a silky peach glow over him. It seemed to set his skin on fire, and she could have watched, hypnotized, for hours as light and shadow played over his golden form. Are you real? she wanted to ask. How can you be?
Instead, she opened one of the bedside drawers and pulled out a pot of lavender salve. As her mother aged and her beauty faded, she’d become more and more obsessed with germs, chemicals, anything she deemed unnatural. So she'd filled house with home remedies and old wives’ cures. She’d fed her husband lily of the valley tea for his liver and made Thea drink onion wine in the winter to ward off colds. About the only thing Thea put any stock in was lavender. It helped you sleep, it soothed mosquito bites, it calmed anxiety.
She hoped it would soothe her angel’s torn skin. “Do you have a name?” she asked him.
“Turiel,” he said.
"Turiel." She sat on the bed behind him, peeling down the towel to expose his back. "I'm going to rub this salve on your back. It might help with the pain. Is that okay?"
She saw him tense, the muscles pulling tight under his skin, but he nodded silently. She hardly dared touch him at first, her fingers feather-light, skimming him. But she felt him relax, heard him sigh as if exhaling his pain, and she grew bolder. She massaged the salve in with slow, lingering sweeps of her hands, carefully working around the raw wounds at his shoulder blades. The sight of the wounds brought tears to her eyes. They were jagged, violent, speaking of a cruelty and strength she couldn't imagine. Would it be like having an arm ripped off? Did he still feel the lost wings like phantom limbs?
She wanted to know what happened. What crimes did angels have to commit to lose their wings and be flung from the sky in a ball of fire? Lust? Murder? What temptations were there in Heaven?
He shuddered at her touch, but she sensed it was less pain and more pleasure now. The pungent scent of lavender hung in the air, lulling her into a steady rhythm as she massaged his back. The tension seeped out of him, drop by drop, in time with the rain beating on the window. Finally, she felt she had to stop. Her hands were free of salve and there seemed to be no other excuses to touch him. She raised her hands.
"Don't stop," he said, his voice almost too low to hear.
She remembered her earlier fear of even looking at him. She'd snapped past it so quickly she ought to have whiplash, but it was ridiculous to fear touching him now when they'd clung together like survivors of s
ome disaster in the shower, when she'd just slid her palms all over that inhuman skin.
And yet, she hesitated. There was a danger here, just one she hadn't identified yet.
"Please," he said, "don't stop."
How could she deny him when he begged like that? Obligingly, she stroked his back again. Daringly, she swept her hand up the back of his neck and into the damp tangle of his silky hair. He arched into her touch with a soft sigh that encouraged her. She trailed her other hand down his spine, brushing the small of his back and the inviting curve of his buttocks. He shifted, leaning forward as if to offer more of himself to her, and then Thea’s nerves failed. He was a work of art, a miracle. You didn’t manhandle art.
She withdrew her hands, folding them in her lap, her cheeks blazing.
He sighed again, then turned so they sat side by side. He re-positioned the fallen towel, shielding his lower body from view. “Do you have a name?” he asked her.
“Thea.”
“Like Theodora, the Empress of Byzantine.”
“Like my Aunt Theodora,” Thea said, blushing even harder, although she wasn’t sure why.
“It’s a very beautiful name,” he said gravely.
Before she could answer, he turned and cupped her face in his hands, careful to keep those wicked nails away from her skin. He drew his thumb across her lips, then pushed his fingers into her hair, combing out the wet locks with slow, deliberate strokes.
The motion was mesmeric and she could have sat there docilely all night, savoring the tenderness he showed her. But the part of her that remembered her grandfather was anxious. It was a thin thread winding through her, pulling her tight no matter how much she simply wanted to relish Turiel’s touch.
“What are you?” she blurted when the thread pulled too tight. “Are you… You can’t really be…”
He paused and flexed his shoulders. She imagined great, snowy wings shifting behind him. “I don’t know what I am now,” he said. “Angels have wings and a place in Heaven. I have neither.”
“What happened?” she asked.
He laughed bitterly. “The same thing that happens to all the fallen angels. I wanted something I couldn’t have in Heaven.” He twitched his shoulders again and a spasm of pain ran through him. “I didn’t think the price would be so high.”
“I’m sorry.” It was such an inadequate thing to say that she wished she’d stayed silent.
“Beautiful Thea,” he said, “don’t be. I’m not.”
“But your wings… It must hurt so much.”
“It does. But it’s a sensation … a new experience…” He began stroking her hair again, winding long, wet strands around his fingers. “Do you know what immortality is, Thea?”
She thought she did, but she sensed her answer would be the wrong one, so she shook her head.
“Sterile,” he said. “An eternity of nothingness. As bland and meaningless as a blank sheet of paper. There is nothing worth having in immortality.”
“I thought Heaven was supposed to be beautiful,” she said. “Eternal joy and love.”
“Maybe it was once. But the Lord and the Devil disappeared and left us behind. Perhaps they took the joy and love with them.”
His words were fascinating and frightening, creating a vision of a world far beyond hers, a mad, inhuman world where angels and demons kicked their heels and waited… Waited for what? Where could the Lord and the Devil disappear to? A world even beyond Turiel’s? Thea’s head spun. She wondered if this was all a fever-dream and she’d wake up in her own bed, the house untouched and angel-free.
She hoped not.
He slid his hands out of her hair and down her throat to rest on her shoulders. She could feel the heat of him even through her robe. His hawk-like gaze was intense, burning, and she wondered what he’d wanted that he couldn’t have in Heaven.
“Have you a lover, Thea?”
Chapter Three
Suddenly she was breathless, flustered beyond words. She didn’t know how to react. Slap him for his impropriety? Where was the sense in that when she’d already been pressed to his naked body? When she’d already touched his bare skin, when he’d already caressed her lips?
But to just fall into his arms, to just give herself to this stranger, this … being… She didn’t think she had the courage for that.
“No,” she said, “and nor will I tonight, Turiel.”
The heat in his eyes didn’t fade, but he nodded and shifted respectfully away from her. “Would you prefer me to leave?”
“No,” she said, faster this time. “You have no clothes,” she added as a lame afterthought.
His lips twitched. “No,” he said. “I do not. Will that be a problem?"
"Yes," she said. "I guess you don't have shame in Heaven?"
His smile grew, warming her all over. "That is a uniquely human emotion."
"Well." She stood, tightening the belt of her robe. His smile was a temptation she wasn't fit to fight. "You can sleep in here ... if you do sleep. In the morning, we can..."
She trailed off, once again stumped for the right etiquette. Did angels take coffee and pancakes for breakfast?
“In the morning, we’ll decide what to do in the morning,” she said finally. She supposed the first task ought to be assessing the damage to the roof and bedroom. Somehow that didn’t seem quite as urgent as dealing with the angel who caused it.
Turiel studied the bed, patting the pillows carefully. “I should sleep?” He sounded unsure.
“Don't angels sleep?” Thea asked him.
“One needs a body to sleep.”
“Well, you have one now,” she pointed out, although she was trying not to think about his body too much. “So you should sleep. Dream.” She smiled shyly. “It would be a new experience for you."
He lay down on his side, expression wary. “Do you never fear that you won’t wake up?”
Thea hugged herself as a dart of pain shot through her. After her mother’s suicide, she’d lain awake at night for weeks, wondering what happened when a person died, where the mind went. Did you know you were gone? Did part of you linger, the way your consciousness lingered when you dreamed? Or did you just … cease, as if you’d never existed at all? She hadn’t been sure which idea was more terrifying.
And then her father had died and after watching him waste away drink by drink, she’d decided it might be better to just cease. It would be an escape, a release that dreaming couldn’t provide. “Not anymore,” she said finally.
As she moved to leave the room, he reached out for her. "Will you stay with me?" he asked.
"In case you get scared?" She meant to tease, but her words came out as solemn as his.
He smiled. "Would you think less of me?"
Since she hadn't really worked out what she thought of him to begin with, Thea didn't think she could think less of him. That sounded cold and odd though, so she didn't say it aloud. Instead, she slipped under the duvet next to him. Turiel still lay on top, so when he draped his arm around her waist, there was no skin contact, and Thea felt that absence keenly. But it was for the best. She didn't trust herself not to cave in if they touched, really touched.
He sighed contentedly and rested his head against hers, his lips moving at the curve of her neck. "You are kind. You feel good. To touch ... to feel... This ... this is what I fell for."
He might be a dream. He might be a hallucination. He might vanish in the morning like fairy gold.
She didn't know and she didn't care. For tonight, at least, she wouldn't question it.
****
Glaring morning sunlight woke her, sliding through the curtains and spreading sticky warmth in its wake. Thea groaned, her awareness returning in bits and pieces. The storm, the fireball, the man ... who was not a man.
She rolled over gingerly, trying not to wake him. He lay still and quiet. In repose, his wild beauty was somewhat softened, and she decided she liked him better awake and untamed. She sat up and peered at his back. The
wounds at his shoulder blades were long, thick scabs now, with tiny tufts of feathers the only proof that he was inhuman, not just a mortal man with strange scars.
As if he felt the weight of her gaze, he stirred, pushing himself up on his elbows with a yawn. The yawn seemed to catch him off-guard, his golden eyes widening, his back arching. Then he winced in pain and slumped back down to the mattress, eyes falling shut again.
Thea rested her hand on his shoulder, carefully. "Can I do anything?" she asked.
He shook his head and eased himself to his knees. Thea was treated to a full, glorious view of him, the thick shaft hanging between his legs, and she wondered how much more sinful it was to look at an angel's cock than his face. He opened his eyes again in time to catch her staring, and for a second they both simply watched each other. Time stretched out thin and fine between them, Thea's cheeks burning and Turiel's eyes filled with a dark curiosity.
His words from last night echoed in her head. To touch ... to feel. This is what I fell for. She wet her lips, conscious of the slight space between them, the possibilities of touching and feeling.
Turiel reached down between his legs, stroking himself with slow, leisurely movements. His eyes fell shut, his shoulders relaxing, and she was reminded of nothing so much as a cat basking in the sun, warm and lazy. She watched his hand move, watched his shaft stiffen, and wondered if it was an invitation to her. Last night he'd seemed so broken, so lost, too much so for her to contemplate sex. A few hours' sleep shouldn't make that much difference. He still was what he was. A miracle, a masterpiece, a fallen angel ... but he was somehow also a man.
She felt like driftwood on the seas, battered around by her conflicting emotions.
He opened his eyes again, watching her watch him. A slow, shy smile spread across his face. "I trouble you."
It took her two attempts to answer, and when she did, her voice was throaty and trembling. "In a way."
