Familiar Angel

by Amy Lane

  Leonard nodded and gazed fondly at his wife, the woman who had pulled him from perdition into love, as she snuck just a little bit of magic to tie a bow on the part of the garland the boys had hung out of her reach. “They never were.”

  At that moment there was a knock at the door, and even Harry’s wounds were forgotten.

  Bel was home, and it was time for his family to celebrate.

  THAT NIGHT, Harry lay in his old room, plain wood and rustic quilt, much as it had been for over a hundred years. On a whim, he closed his eyes and let his magic wander, counting the heartbeats around him.

  Leonard and Emma, quietly talking. Edward, meditating on what Harry didn’t want to know. Bel and Francis—oh my!

  Harry pulled his attention from Bel’s room in a hot hurry, stumbling instead on another heartbeat, frantic and thready, a man running for his life, mortally wounded, on his last hope.

  Suriel!

  Suddenly, suffocatingly, he was surrounded by the will of an angel striving with all his might to be free.

  Suriel! Suriel, I’m here!

  Harry—I can’t see you! Harry—I need you—please—

  Harry sat up in bed, reaching with his mind, his power, his heart, and his soul, trying to break through the barrier of the simple room into the dimension where his angel struggled against chains to find him.

  The image gave him strength, and in his mind’s eye he saw his fist punching through the barrier between earth and heaven, reaching for his lover in succor.

  Then Suriel grabbed his hand back.

  Augh! The pressure dragging Suriel away pulled mightily, almost ripping Harry’s arm from its socket, reopening his half-healed wound, and his scream resonated in both worlds! Oh God, Harry was losing him, his life, his beloved, ripped away from his arms before he even had a chance to—

  Help me!

  In his heart, he called upon his family, and like a surge of adrenaline, they were there.

  All of them, strengthening his magic, strengthening his body—his hand tightened on Suriel’s and his magic opened, and together, he and the people he loved yanked with all their force.

  The snapping of shackles ripped audibly through the house, and Suriel’s exultant scream of freedom rocked the floorboards. Like a baby sliding from the womb into the air, Suriel ripped through the barrier between heaven and Harry and crashed into Harry’s arms.

  For a moment, Harry lay crushed, staring up at him in shock from his pillow while a naked Suriel stared back.

  As they stared, the pain that had dogged Harry since he’d been shot warmed, eased, and health flowered up through his lungs, healing completely.

  And the lashes that had scored Suriel’s face healed almost completely, leaving only the faintest of silver scars in their wake.

  “You still have angel magic,” Harry said, stunned.

  A slow smile blossomed over Suriel’s pointed, lovely features. “And you’re still brave.”

  Harry wrapped his arms around Suriel’s shoulders and laughed and wept together, while Suriel did the same. That’s where they were when the door flew open and they were suddenly surrounded by brothers and parents, all celebrating that their family was together—and it had grown.

  Eventually the others went back to bed, leaving Harry and Suriel alone on Harry’s narrow bed. Harry laid his head on Suriel’s chest, stroking gently.

  “What happened?” he asked softly.

  Suriel’s laugh held very little humor. “Have you ever heard the term ‘a hell of your own making’?”

  Harry pushed up on one elbow and searched his face. The scars were all but completely faded, leaving a bare suggestion of silver in their place, but his angel was leaner, worn, and sharp after his absence.

  Harry’s heart squeezed tight in his chest.

  “What was your hell?” he whispered.

  Suriel nuzzled his temple. “You,” he whispered back. “I’d wanted you for so long. And I’d taken you—stolen time away from the world just to have you to myself. It was too much happiness for an angel used to being bound to service, Harry. I didn’t feel worthy of it. I didn’t feel worthy of you.”

  Harry sat up and smacked him, the tears spilling over. “Ass. Hole.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and flailed for words that wouldn’t come. “How could… how could… how could….”

  “Sh… sh….” Suriel sat up and folded Harry in his arms.

  For the first time Harry noticed the absence of wings.

  “Your wings…,” he cried. “How could you—” He ran his hands blindly over Suriel’s shoulder blades, feeling the scars he’d known would be there.

  “I had to sacrifice something,” Suriel said, his voice twisted. “I couldn’t stay away from you another breath, another minute, not after you appeared before me so close to death. But you understand? I took joy in my work, Harry. I felt like I was giving to the world, sharing that terrible burden for all who were bound. I couldn’t leave—not without giving something back, something to help those bound withstand their suffering. Do you understand?”

  Harry nodded against his shoulder. “You gave your wings,” he rasped. “Your great bird—?”

  “I’ll never fly again, not like that.”

  The grief in Suriel’s voice nearly cracked Harry’s heart in two, but then he remembered the healing. Suriel hadn’t lost all his gifts—perhaps…?

  “Your cat?” he begged, raising his face to his lover’s in hope.

  Suriel’s smile was as pure and unfettered as it always should have been, without a trace of sorrow, not even for wings. “How could we live side by side if we could no longer fish for minnows?”

  “How long?” Harry asked, thinking of extended lifespans, how his body showed barely ten years of a hundred and forty, and how Emma looked to be in her late thirties when he’d gathered she’d lived more than five hundred years. How long would he be forced to wander the earth, holding on for the time when he could see his beloved again?

  “I have as long as you have,” Suriel told him, tracing delicate fingertips along his hairline. He sobered. “So try not to make any more trips to heaven before it’s your time, yes?”

  Harry couldn’t stop sobbing.

  Suriel hushed him, kissing his face, his jaw, his ears, his neck, until the need for comfort dissolved, became a craving for touch, became want. Harry’s sobs of breath turned to panting arousal, and Suriel’s hands cruised his skin in discovery. He growled in disapproval when he found new scars and hummed with each cut of muscle, each sweep of unviolated skin. Harry thrashed beneath him, his grief, his joy, his fear transforming him to an open nerve and mindless frenzied arousal.

  “Hold still,” Suriel commanded, holding Harry’s wrists above his head. “I need… I need inside you. You’re my haven, my home. I need you around me.”

  Harry nodded consent, drawing his knees up, spreading his thighs. “Lotion’s on the… ah!”

  Suriel lowered his head, taking in one nipple, then the other, keeping Harry’s hands suspended so he wouldn’t flail. Harry keened, bucking his hips, lost in mindless need.

  Suddenly his ears popped.

  Suriel looked at him with wide, expressive eyes, and Harry took stock of where they were.

  “My cabin.” He chuckled, still mad with desire. “My bed. Guess we got loud.”

  Suriel’s low laugh did nothing but stoke him higher. “Lotion?” he asked, a little desperately.

  “Better. Lube. Under the pillow—” He freed his wrist from Suriel’s and rooted for the little bottle he’d used to remind himself of this moment right here: Suriel’s hands on his body.

  He fumbled the bottle into Suriel’s hand, only to be brought up short by Suriel’s amused expression.

  “What?”

  “You were touching yourself.” Reverence tinged every syllable.

  “Uh—”

  Suriel closed his eyes and breathed lightly through his nose. “I can almost smell your desire….” He opened his eyes again, his
stare penetrating through the intimate dark. “Oh, Harry—the things you and I will do….”

  Without warning he let go of Harry’s wrists, placed both hands on his hips, and took Harry’s throbbing erection into his mouth in one smooth stroke.

  Harry’s scream of arousal was probably still heard in the big house, but he couldn’t have stilled it if he tried.

  “So… oh God, Suriel!”

  A small climax spurted hard into Suriel’s hot mouth, but as Suriel parted Harry’s thighs even farther, his arousal didn’t flag.

  Suriel’s fingers, slick, nimble, probed at his entrance, and he buried his hands into that comforting fall of hair, thrusting against the back of Suriel’s throat.

  “Please,” he whimpered. “Slow later. I need you now.”

  Oh yes! Suriel’s body covered his, warm and sleek, the drive into Harry’s entrance smooth and powerful. Harry sheathed him, aching with the stretch, and he cried out, filled.

  “Oh yes,” Suriel breathed. “Needed this. Needed you.”

  Harry pulled his knees up, wrapped his ankles around Suriel’s thighs, and urged him faster. Harder. Begged Suriel to drive him out of his mind.

  Glorious! Suriel thrust, the sound of their flesh slapping filling the room, an animal thing, carnal and sublime.

  Harry’s body filled, not just with Suriel’s cock, but with the enormity of his love, the great and terrible price Suriel had paid for this moment here, to be buried in Harry’s flesh and held next to his heart. The knowledge swelled in his chest—swelled in his cock—and he cried out, the flash of light climaxing behind his eyes greater than human, greater than magic, somehow this animal act becoming the fulfillment of the divine.

  Love in all its greatness was a truly heavenly thing.

  Harry screamed, orgasm washing over him like the feeling of light spilling from his eyes, his fingertips, his cock. But only the feeling.

  They were men, together, in love. When Suriel shouted above him and spilled into his body, the only thing that spilled from either of them was sweat and joy and come.

  Suriel collapsed on top of him, laying little kisses on the side of his face, smoothing his hair from his eyes.

  Harry smiled up at him, limp and sated and needing him all over again.

  “That was only round one,” he said, satisfied that they had all night.

  Suriel smiled, all smugness and arrogance. Harry hurt with loving him so hard.

  “We’ll have to sleep sometime,” he murmured.

  Harry raised up to kiss him, taste him again, feeling Suriel swell while still in his body.

  “Not yet,” he murmured as Suriel began to rock back and forth again.

  “Not yet.”

  FINALLY, OF course, they did sleep, and then they showered and ate, Harry feeding Suriel pieces of chocolate pancake across the table.

  “So what now?” Suriel asked when they were mostly full.

  “Christmas is tomorrow,” Harry told him. “I’m sure Edward will be by with the truck in a couple of hours to come pick us up so we can spend it with family.”

  Suriel looked stricken. “Don’t you give gifts?”

  Harry regarded him steadily. “Are you going to make me say it?”

  “I’m your gift,” Suriel said, his smile a gift in itself.

  “Oh yes,” Harry confirmed. “That you are.”

  Suriel’s smile faded. “But… I mean, the rest of our lives. However long that may be.”

  Harry shrugged. “I’m not tired of the family business just yet. You?”

  Suriel frowned in thought, and for a moment Harry’s heart failed him, and he imagined having to leave his brothers alone as they ventured into danger and into the rest of their lives.

  “No,” Suriel said softly. “No. That would be great, in fact. It’s like continuing my mission here on earth. Gives me purpose.” His thoughtfulness lifted. “Besides making love to you, of course.”

  Harry winked. “Of course.” And then he grew thoughtful in turn. “My brothers aren’t settled yet,” he said baldly. “Edward—he’s venturing into dark magics. If he and Mullins don’t solve what’s between them, like you and I did, I fear for him. Not just his body, Suriel, his soul.”

  Suriel nodded, looking grieved. “Yes, I can see how that could be worrisome. And you’re right. You and Edward have always needed each other. I wouldn’t take you away from him. Certainly not now.”

  “Good.” Harry swallowed. “Thank yo—”

  “No thank-yous. I loved you all, Harry.” Delicate color danced over his pale features. “Just, you know. Not the same as you.”

  Harry bit his lip, shy in a way that surprised him. “That’s, uh, good to know,” he said with dignity, and then grew serious again. “And Bel and Francis are….”

  “Still lovers?” Suriel asked anxiously.

  Harry didn’t color—he blushed. “Oh my God, yes. But they’re not settled either. Bel leaves and Francis turns inward, all cat, all skittish. He needs to find himself before he and Bel come together for real. They haven’t even told the parents yet.”

  Suriel frowned. “Do Emma and Leonard know?” he asked.

  Harry shrugged and nibbled pancake thoughtfully. “It’s possible. Emma knows everything, usually, and Leonard only pretends to be the distracted father. But—” He grimaced. “—I needed them. They’ll need—”

  “Us,” Suriel said, putting a syrup-sticky finger on his lips. “They’ll need us. I’ll never desert you again, Harry. That means being there for your brothers, for Emma and Leonard, even for Mullins, because he’s loved your family too. Don’t worry. I didn’t escape my bindings because I disliked being bound by my word. I escaped them because I wanted to choose who I’d bind my life to.”

  Harry smiled then, and licked his finger. “Me, right?”

  Suriel laughed and traced his lips. “Idiot.”

  Harry sucked his finger into the cavern of his mouth, and Suriel tilted back his head and closed his eyes. “Think we can go again before Edward gets here with the truck?” he asked seriously.

  Harry released his finger and grinned. “I think it’s worth the try.”

  They were barely done and barely dressed by the time Edward and Francis knocked on the door. Suriel made the bed while Harry washed the dishes, chivvied on by his brothers about being lazy and not doing his chores.

  Harry gave back as good as he got, but inside, he was thinking of magic.

  And how you didn’t really have to be an angel to fly—you just had to be in love with one.

  Harry planned to fly with Suriel for centuries to come.

  Purple

  Amy’s Alternative Universe Romance

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