by Eden Bradley
“I’d be surprised if you were ever able to get used to the noise and the pace of a big city. Hell, I’d be surprised if I did. I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to worry about that.”
He was looking down at her, his features soft and loose. That small spark of desire in his eyes that never dimmed entirely, but there was emotion, too.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him. “I made poached salmon for dinner.”
“I’m always hungry.”
His hands slid down to cup her bottom as he pulled her hips close to his. His hard flesh pressed against her. She arched her hips into his, felt that answering pulse of desire in her sex.
“Come on, Declan. Take me inside.”
“Mmm…can’t wait that long.”
He swept her down onto the porch stairs, somehow slipping her panties off from beneath her sundress as he went. She was ready, panting, when he unzipped his fly and she reached in to take his cock out. He was all warm, solid flesh in her hand. She wanted to taste him. But she needed him inside her just as badly.
“Come on, Declan.”
“Ah, you’re impatient, baby.”
“I am.”
She pushed her dress up and spread her thighs, leaning back on the stairs. He knelt before her, using his hands to part her thighs farther.
“So damn beautiful,” he murmured before bending over her and sweeping his tongue over her aching cleft.
“Oh…do it again.”
He did, his tongue sliding up, then down the seam of her sex. He parted her then, his thumbs spreading her flesh wide as he delved in with his tongue. He pressed it against her hole, and she whimpered with need, pure driving desire.
“Declan, don’t tease me.”
She grabbed his head, her fingers going into his dark hair, and held him to her while he licked her in long, flickering strokes.
“Oh…”
Her climax came down on her like a summer storm. Flashing through her body like heat lightning, sharp and electric. And before she was done he was leaning over her, his mouth latching on to her throat as he slipped his cock inside.
“Jesus, that’s so good. You feel so good, baby,” he murmured into her neck. “I love to feel how tight you are. How wet. I love it when you’re around me. Yeah, just like that.”
He drove into her, and the stairs were a little too hard, digging into her back. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was right here. In her body. Flesh to flesh.
She hung on to his shoulders, her nails digging in as he thrust harder and harder. Pleasure rose once more, and she came again, in short, sharp jolts.
“Ah, Declan!”
Then he was coming, his hips arching, hard and wild.
When it was over he kissed her neck, her face.
“Jesus, Angel.”
He was still panting, his body still covering hers so that she could feel the heaving of his chest against her breasts. She ran her hands over his sides, his buttocks, his strong thighs. He was so much a man. So solid.
“Declan?”
“Hmm? What is it, baby?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“No, I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying.”
Why did she feel like crying? She couldn’t explain it to herself.
“You’re saying you love me, and I’m saying I love you, and it’s all good.” He stroked her damp hair from her face, kissed her chin.
“Yes, but it’s more than that. I didn’t know how much more it could be. How precious you would be to me. How much your love and being able to trust you means to me.”
“Sweetheart…”
He kissed her again, a sweet brushing of his lips against hers. She knew he wasn’t as verbal as she was. Knew that men generally weren’t, or so Ruth had explained to her. But she felt it all in his touch.
After a while, they got up and went into the house, Liam pushing his way first through the screen door. Declan changed out of his work clothes while Angel went into the kitchen to finish making dinner. Declan’s cell phone, which he’d left on the kitchen table, went off.
“Declan, someone is calling you,” she called down the hallway.
“Who is it?”
“Your dad.”
“I’ll call him back in a minute.”
Her heart started to pound. Just a small murmuring beat that was a little too hard. She was still standing by the table, frozen, a wooden spoon in her hand, when Declan came into the kitchen.
“Angel? What is it? Did you talk to him? Is everything okay?”
“I… No, I didn’t talk to him. I don’t know if everything is okay.”
Declan’s brows drew together as he stepped toward her. He laid his hand across her back, his palm resting between her shoulder blades, over the two long scars there as he dialed Oran’s number.
“Dad? It’s me. You just called?”
He was quiet for several endless moments. She could hear Oran’s rumbling voice on the other end, just the low notes. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. Declan was nodding his head, but he wasn’t saying anything. But he was looking at her, watching her face.
“Jesus.” A long pause, and then he asked, “You’re sure, Dad?” Another pause. “This is great news. Incredible. Yes, I’ll tell her right now. Wait for Ruth? No, I don’t think so. This is good news. The best. Yeah. I’ll call you later. Thanks, Dad. Bye.”
He flipped the phone shut. His eyes were gleaming, his face flushed. He smiled, a wide, beatific smile.
“Angel, I have the most incredible news.”
She reached blindly for a chair, sat down. Why couldn’t she calm down? She felt as though her heart would beat right out of her chest.
Declan knelt in front of her, took her hands. “They found her. The Grandmother. They’ve got her. She tried to take another child, another little girl, those bastards. But because of an AMBER Alert they found her. And discovered the whole damn compound. The old woman, the whole lot of them. Nine people arrested in all. They’ve got her. They took her to jail. She’s going to be in there for the rest of her life.” He stopped, squeezed her hands. “Angel? You’re pale. Are you okay?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know how to answer him. She was…in shock. Grateful that a child had been saved from the years of punishment she’d endured. And horrified by the idea that The Grandmother was going to be locked up somewhere. Perhaps treated harshly.
“Angel? What is it?”
She wrenched her hands free and twisted them together in her lap. Tears crept over her cheeks. She could do nothing to stop them.
“Baby. You’re safe now. Really safe, finally. It’s okay.”
She shook her head, harder and harder until her hair flew in her face. “It’s not okay. Don’t you see?”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“That old woman—she was all I had most of my life. Do you have any idea what that means to me? And you’re here celebrating.”
“But, Angel, after all the horrible shit she did to you…”
“Don’t you think I know that?” She hadn’t meant to yell, but the words simply came out that way. She tried to take a breath, but all she did was draw in a deep sob. “I can’t forgive her. But neither can I condemn her. It’s not in me to do that.”
Declan was quiet for several moments. She could hear his harsh breath. “I’m trying to understand. But this is crazy. She took you from your family. She drugged you. She cut you, for God’s sake. There are scars all over your body.” He pulled her hands into his, turned them faceup. “Look. She tattooed you, a child. You’ll wear these marks the rest of your life!”
She yanked her hands back, twisted them in her lap. She couldn’t look at him.
“She shoved a bunch of insane rhetoric down your throat along with the drugs,” he went on. “She told you your entire life’s purpose was to be some sex slave to Satan. How can you find anything even remotely forgivable there?”
“To forgive is
divine,” she murmured, hiding her face in her hands.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t want to try. Her heart was breaking.
“Jesus, Angel. Okay. Okay. I get that. But isn’t there some small part of you that’s glad these people have been stopped? Made to pay for what they’ve done?”
“Stopped, yes. But punished? What purpose has punishment ever served, Declan? That part I do not understand.”
He got up, began to pace. Her stomach rolled, knotted. She felt sick.
“Angel. Shit. Finding these people has been my only purpose since I found you on that beach. Retribution. These people are monsters.”
“The Grandmother is not a monster. How can you say that? She raised me.”
“She abducted you from the people who should have raised you! From the family who loved you.”
“You don’t know that. We don’t even know them, the Norlings.”
“They’re your parents, Angel. Your brother. The only reason we haven’t contacted them is because you asked for more time. But they must have spent all these years grieving.”
“They are nearly strangers,” she insisted.
“Jesus.”
He ran a hand through his hair. She could see the rage in his eyes. The confusion. There was no less confusion and rage within her. She couldn’t stand that he was so unable to see what she was feeling about this. That he was unwilling to. She felt frozen inside. Frozen and full of pain.
“I need…I need to be with Ruth.”
“Okay. I’ll call her, make an appointment.”
“No. I mean I need to be with her. For a while.”
“What?” His eyes were blazing, full of blue fire. It reminded her suddenly a little too much of Asmodeus, of the endless burning black of his gaze. A small shudder ran through her.
She said quietly, firmly, “I’ll call her myself. Have her come pick me up.”
“What are you saying?”
There was shock on his face. But she was too much in shock herself to take it all in. Tears were a hard, bitter lump in her throat.
“I need to go. I can’t stay here while you crow about the only family I’ve ever known being taken away. Punished. Suffering. I cannot do it. I won’t do it.”
He reached for her, but she rose from the chair and moved away.
“I need to go, Declan.”
He looked absolutely overcome, bewildered. He didn’t say anything as she went into the living room to call Ruth. He remained in the kitchen while she went to her room and gathered some clothes, took her toothbrush from the bathroom, stuffing everything into a pillowcase. He still hadn’t moved from the kitchen when Ruth’s old blue Mercedes pulled into the driveway and Angel walked outside.
Declan stood, stunned, in the kitchen. He couldn’t even look out the window, listening to the swing of the front door as Angel walked out, the slam of the car door. The tires crushing the gravel in the driveway as they pulled away.
She was gone.
He couldn’t comprehend it. He’d done everything he could for her. Protected her, cared for her, kept her safe. Done everything in his power to help reopen her case and hunt down these fucking lunatics who had taken a five-year-old child from her family and kept her locked up. Abused her. For sixteen years. Her whole goddamn life. And now it was as though none of that counted for anything. That crazy old woman’s pull on Angel was bigger, stronger, than the fact that they loved each other. And just like with Abby, with his mother, she was gone, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Not again.
His whole body froze up, the chill creeping over him a little at a time. That same sense of being fucking paralyzed taking him over. He could not move.
He stood by the chair, his fingers gripping the back of it as the sun set, the sky turning dark outside. Liam settled on the floor at his feet. Declan stayed there until his knees ached, his fingers stiff from gripping the chair. And the whole time there were a thousand thoughts and images flying through his brain, like some sort of chaotic movie, playing itself out over and over.
His mother in the hospital bed, wasting away, while his father stood silently next to her. Abby’s face, the shock in her eyes, as she bled out in mere moments, into the Bahrain street. Angel telling him she wanted to leave. And through all of it, he was frozen. Paralyzed.
Powerless.
Fuck.
Mom. Abby. Angel.
Angel.
Finally he moved, and went to pull a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet. Poured two fingers into a glass, took a swig.
He wasn’t much of a drinker, and it burned going down his throat. But the sting of it helped to clear his head.
He didn’t have to be powerless, goddamn it. Not this time. He could choose differently. He could choose. He had to hope Angel would choose, too. That she would choose to let the bonds of her past go.
That she would choose him.
* * *
ANGEL LAY ON RUTH’S SOFA in the dark, listening to the night sounds. They were different here than they were at home.
At Declan’s home.
She wasn’t sure it would be hers any longer. She wasn’t sure she could go back.
Ruth had talked to her a little in the car, but mostly she had let her be. Once at her small cottage, Ruth had made up a bed for her on the sofa and a cup of tea, and they’d listened to an opera together in quiet companionship before Ruth had gone to bed.
Ruth had told Angel she sensed she had to work this issue out for herself. She was grateful for Ruth recognizing her need for independence while offering the comforting solidity of her presence, as well as a safe haven. And she understood she had to figure this out on her own. Understood this was a crucial part of her growth, of creating her new self. With or without Declan. And either way, she knew it would mean saying goodbye to Asmodeus. Forever.
She was anxious now to reach the dream place where she would see him, tell him what she must do. But she also dreaded it, making it official. It felt so finite to her. So far sleep had eluded her, but she’d been lying in the dark for several hours and her eyelids were growing heavy. Still, she fought it, afraid to make that final commitment.
She plumped the pillow, turned over and closed her eyes. She knew what she had to do. Had to do. Come what may. She would be strong enough to handle it. She was strong enough.
She forced her eyes to close and it felt good. In her mind she imagined her garden, all her growing things, the happy sounds of the birds. She pulled in one long, slow breath after another, willed her body to relax, her nerves to calm.
This was necessary. This was what she wanted. What she chose.
The garden was lush and green. Flowers grew among the herbs and vegetables. The scent of the earth was all around her, the warm scent of a summer sky. She reached out to stroke the long, narrow leaf of a corn stalk, that lovely deep velvet-green, inhaled the soft air.
It grew dark, bit by bit. There was nothing threatening there, only that summer softness fading around her. When the garden disappeared, she knew she had him.
Asmodeus.
She felt his striking heat before she saw him. Felt his unhappiness like some viable aura.
“Asmodeus.”
“You call, and I come. I am ever your faithful servant.” His voice was as deep and rumbling as ever, like a heavy thundercloud.
“I don’t want you to be. Not anymore.”
“Yes. I always sense what is in your heart.”
“What do you see there now?” she asked him, some part of her wanting him to know, so she wouldn’t have to say the words. But she must be braver than that.
“This man. Your connection to him. To the earthly plane. A parting of ways for us.”
“Yes.” Her heart was heavy. But she knew this was right. “This has been coming, Asmodeus. We’ve both known it, you and I.”
“It makes it no less painful. I will cease to exist in your reality. Perhaps altogether.”
He sighed, and steam blew out in
a hot breath from his perfect nostrils.
“Asmodeus, I have to tell you, I have come to understand how you are a manifestation of my own fears and dreams. I must accept that in order to be free to be my own person. To put my past behind me and move on, move forward to whatever my future might hold. I am coming to see for the first time that I truly have one.”
“You have always had a future. Time moves, with or without our noticing.”
“That’s too vague for me. I want a specific future. I want a life of my choosing. I want a life. I thought I’d chosen before, but I didn’t know enough. I knew nothing of the possibilities.”
“And now you do.” Another sigh. His sadness radiated from him like energy, like an electric crackling in the still, dark air.
“I will never fall with you again, Asmodeus. And my heart is broken. But I know I will recover. I know what I must do. I must say goodbye. Here. Now.”
One tear fell from his coal-black eyes, gleaming blue as it traced its way over his golden cheek. So hard. So utterly perfect. He nodded. She reached out to him, but he began to drift from her, farther and farther away, until he disappeared altogether.
The pain was a small searing in her chest. It spread and the pain melted, turning to a pure light that was nothing more than a brilliant, piercing ache. But bearable, something she knew would fade in time.
She would have a life now. She was her own person, finally.
Her mind drifted, into the simple dreams of one who did nothing more than sleep, who had no larger task than to rest. Her anger and confusion drained away and left in its place a certainty she had never felt before.
She would be okay.
* * *
HE’D LET A DAY GO BY. He wanted Angel to have the opportunity to talk with Ruth, to let Ruth get her calmed down.
Declan had spent a sleepless night without her in his bed. Had finally gotten up and sat in the amber glow of the porch light, Liam at his side, working a piece of wood. Working some of the frustration and regret out of his system, his mind turning everything over, searching for clarity. Facing some hard truths about himself.
He was beginning to have a clearer understanding of what Angel must be feeling. And his own insensitivity to her. Why hadn’t he brought the news to her with less of the victory in his tone? He could have kept that to himself or shared it with no one but his father. But the whole being-her-protector thing had gone to his head.
