Daman's Angel (Crimson Romance)

by Charmaine Ross

  May as well get used to the heat. He was sure he’d get his gut-full in the next life.

  His breath expelled, sending a spray of water over the tiles. There was no way to relieve his guilt, so he may as well concentrate on the task at hand. Pete should be back soon and they would have to come up with a plan to get to his apartment and take the information he’d gathered. The end of his life would come soon enough and he would have plenty of time after his death to think through the wrong he’d done. At least the priest might help him.

  Daman turned the water off, stepped from the shower and scrubbed his reddened skin dry. Winding the towel around his hips, he reached for his phone and called Father Joseph. It went to his voicemail. Daman tried twice again, only to get the same result. It wasn’t like the priest not to answer his calls on the first couple of rings. Frowning, Daman reached for his clothes when Angel came into his room.

  His body instantly responded with a kick to the gut and a pull in his groin. He felt himself harden before she’d taken two steps into his room. Mentally cursing, he placed his hands on his hips and faced her.

  “I woke and you weren’t there,” she said. There was a hitch in her tone.

  He felt the pain in her voice, the misunderstanding that ripped through him, stripped his gut like the decayed half-man he knew he’d become. He’d seen her asleep before stealing into another bedroom, unable to lie with her for the night, unable to forgive himself for what he’d done. It was the selfishness of his actions that garroted his conscience. He’d taken from her — again — and left.

  How could he have forgotten Michelle so easily? So … totally.

  “I thought you’d sleep better that way,” he said.

  “But, I thought … after we … ” Hurt and confusion lit her face, then comprehension. “I understand.”

  He stifled the urge to bring her into his arms, soothe her and tell her it was going to be all right. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t. Better she learned the truth; being flesh and blood was not all about the pleasure it could bring. Better she accept it was far better to be in a place where you didn’t have to feel. Where there were no morals, no right and wrong, where being an angel and taking souls to their next life was easier than having to think and realize what you’d done was wrong time and time again.

  Don’t think. Don’t feel. It left you in a better place. An easy place.

  He’d become used to living in that type of amnesia. Now look where feeling for the first time in years had gotten him. It hadn’t healed. Just left open wounds gaping. He had no right to put her though anything more than he had. He’d already gone too far. He couldn’t offer her a life. Couldn’t offer her anything beyond the next day. He couldn’t make any promises. She deserved much better than that. Any woman did, let alone an angel.

  “We’ve got a busy day ahead. I thought it would be better if you slept.” He added liar to the vast list of sins he’d committed.

  She stepped closer. “What we did was good. It wasn’t wrong.”

  He paused. “Angel, you don’t know the first thing about being human.”

  “I wanted to do what we did. Mistake or not, it was good. I don’t regret it.”

  A hot wave of emotion closed his throat. She’d admitted it was a mistake. To know it was one thing, but to hear her say it …

  “As soon as you start committing wrongs and think that it’s right, you’re becoming too human.”

  “It’s good to feel. As an angel, you experience, but it’s not so intense. So mind-blowing. To me it’s so right. I can’t go back to the washed-down version I used to be.” She came to him, touched him. A simple gesture, a hand on his arm, a light feathery touch, but it had the strength of a fist. His heart constricted. He had to make her want to go.

  “Does this … pain … feel good to you?”

  “It’s better than feeling nothing at all. To feel is to live. That is the gift.”

  “Feeling the way I have done these past years is not a gift. If you ask me, it’s hell.”

  Having your heart ripped from your body, held at arm’s length and squeezed every minute of the day was not the way he wanted to keep on living. There was no end in sight. Making love to Angel had reminded him how painful it was to feel. That was something he just couldn’t do again. Once was enough.

  He looked at her, watched her silver-blonde hair frame her perfect face. She was sympathy, compassion, pure loveliness, a light from heaven. Life.

  Love.

  His heart gave a painful lurch. He couldn’t go there again. Knowing the aching pain of complete loss was too much to contemplate. He had to reject her now.

  Make it a clean cut.

  There was no future for them.

  Today was going to be the day he died and she would be returned to an angel.

  There were only a few short hours left to be together. Such a limited time to be flesh and blood together. His gaze dropped to her soft lips; lush cherry blossoms called to him. Reached for him.

  Maybe if there were just one more kiss between them, his heart wouldn’t feel so heavy. He wouldn’t be so drained. He could die without regrets; no second-guessing whether what he’d done was right or wrong.

  His head dipped, mouth accepting hers. She reached for him, pressed herself against him. Like it had always been, like it should always be.

  How could something that felt so good be so sinful.

  At the first taste of her, he forgot his internal reprimand. As his tongue stroked hers he forgot all reason. His hand brushed her breast and he felt her nipple harden through her T-shirt at the first delicate caress. There was no self-control as his hand cupped her breast and the sweet, firm feel of her filled his hand.

  She groaned, a soft breathy whispery sound that inflamed his blood to instant beyond-reason boiling point. He cupped her waist, crushing her to him. Her hands flew to his nape, her fingers scraped his skull. Her other hand found the towel. With a flick, she’d untwined the end. It fell to the floor and pooled at his feet. Cool air brushed his skin. Heat on his chest where her body heat inflamed him, cool on his bare buttocks.

  She crushed her pelvis against his ready erection, deepened the kiss, her tongue danced with his, lips suckling, caressing, stroking.

  A far corner of his mind issued a warning. Don’t kiss. Don’t feel.

  It was enough to slice a path through his quickly rising passion. He pulled away. Her mouth was wet from their contact. Breathlessly, she gazed up at him. Intent and passion hazed her eyes. His brain clutched at reason.

  Don’t because …

  “It’s not wrong. And if it is, I don’t care,” she breathed.

  There was no further reasoning. She clutched him close to her, replaced her lips on his mouth, walked him to the bed. The mattress caught him behind his knees and he fell backward, hitting the middle of the bed full in his back. She stood above him. Her erect nipples were obvious beneath her T-shirt, setting his blood to boiling. The gleam in her eyes was predatory, hungry.

  His appetite was more than whet. She peeled off her T-shirt. She was naked underneath. His erection quivered as he watched her naked form as she dropped the material to the floor. Desperate to touch, feel, have her around him made him edgy. Urgency claimed his veins, his mind, his want. His desire. He took her hand and pulled her to the bed.

  She placed her knees on either side of his hips and rested astride him. She lowered herself onto him. Her soft, wet flesh embraced him. He kissed her, driving his tongue into her mouth at the same time tilting his hips, and enveloping himself against her ready warmth.

  She edged herself on top of him sliding down to his hilt. Resting there a moment before rocking upwards on her knees and sliding downwards again. She moved so slowly he felt her simmering heat on the tip of his erection for a moment, before returning to take the full length of him in. />
  She broke the kiss, tossed her head backward. A guttural sigh escaped her mouth as she rode her orgasm. Muscles clenched around him, throbbing and pounding his exquisitely sensitive member.

  She rocked forward, her pelvis grinding against his. He was helpless but to watch her features soften, mouth open, eyes closed in sated contentment before he reached to grasp her hips, sliding her up and back and riding his own explosive orgasm.

  His eyes screwed shut, neck muscles straining, breath hissing between clenched teeth as he soared on the powerful tide of complete abandonment.

  • • •

  Sated, she lay next to him, scooped in his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder, a long leg nestled over his. Her arm lay across his chest, fingers tapered over his shoulder. Her fine, silken hair splayed over his still heated skin. He rested his chin on the top of her head, closed his eyes and thought. And silently cursed.

  What a damn fool thing to do. For the second time he’d lost any sense he might have clung to that would have stopped what he’d just done. What they’d done together.

  It’d been explosive. Amazing. His need overpowering. He didn’t know he possessed such depth of urgency. Didn’t know where it came from. Just knew it was there and it was something that he had to react to. To fall to his knees and cave to this blinding need she stirred within him. He had little resistance when it came to her.

  She said she didn’t care what happened because of this. That had been his undoing. He’d simply believed her. Had purposely pushed away all thought so that he might feel her in his arms, feel her around him one more time only to know that it still wasn’t enough.

  The need stirred. His groin pulled at the thought of making love with her again. So fast. So completely.

  She seemed to have as little control as he did. But they’d only known each other for a short while. His police-detective mind ticked through possibilities of why and all came up short. Surely he wasn’t worth such risk for her to take. There seemed to be nothing to feed her interest in him.

  He stroked the hair from her temple. She moved onto her elbow so that she was half on top of his chest looking down at him. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and ignored the softness in her eyes, the longing he read there.

  “Angel … why?” he ground out.

  Her brows moved together on either side of a small crease between them. “What do you mean?”

  “Why this? Why me? You don’t know me. Why are you interested in doing this with me?”

  Her brows flicked upward, he saw the hesitation in wide eyes. “Because you are you.” A shadow moved behind them. There was more. Something she wasn’t telling him.

  “That’s all?”

  “What else is there?”

  “There’s no future. You know that.”

  She took his face between her hands and sincerity replaced the shadows. “I will take it with me forever, into the eternity if I need to. I don’t regret anything we have done and neither should you. What we share isn’t a sin. It’s beautiful.” She touched her lips to his, so tenderly, so gently it almost undid him. Something about the way she touched him triggered a memory buried under memories of memories. With a great amount of self-control, he pulled away and watched the play of emotions cross her face.

  It was a mere feeling, a quick glimpse of much more, something that went back for months and months, a trigger of something greater than just the here and now. As though he knew her intimately. Had known her before she lay like this in his arms. Then it was washed away with a tide of confusion and regret.

  He held her against him, feeling his heart thumping, skin prickling with a mix of awareness and forgetfulness. However hard he tried he couldn’t pry loose that fleeting recognition. He knew it would loosen so much more buried beneath, but the more he tried, the more it was lost to him.

  She knew there was no future. Had said as much. He knew it, too. It would end soon. And the knowledge only served to tighten the knot of despair that had started to tie itself around his heart from the moment he’d woken to find her draped over him in that dirty, wet alley.

  • • •

  While they waited for Pete to come back to the safe house, Daman made Angel breakfast. He watched as she ate, the feeling of familiarity niggling in the far reaches of his mind. They spoke of little things and soon Daman had lost himself in the comfortable movements of the familiar. He could get used to this, watching her eat breakfast, talking, getting lost in contented companionship.

  It used to be like this with Michelle. Easy silence mingled with talk over little things. It made him take his mind off his work life, where things were tough and the people he dealt with were harsh.

  He’d forgotten how human it made him feel.

  The knowledge that he’d wasted years of his life wrapped up with so much hate that it had clung to him as close as a second skin made his gut lurch. Michelle would have never wanted her death to have caused him years such as those.

  “Are you all right?”

  He glanced into clear, blue eyes. Weak winter sunlight filtered through the window behind her, making her hair seem to glow as though it were a misty aura around her face. The face of dreams. Confused, he looked back to his plate and stabbed a chunk of egg onto the end of the fork and cleared his throat. “Just going through what we’re going to be doing today, that’s all.”

  He glanced back at her to find that the look she wore was grim. “That’s not all,” she said.

  He opened his mouth, and then shut it again. How could he say in words the transcendent feeling he’d had about her all morning. Instead he said, “It will all be over by this evening.”

  She set her plate aside. The relaxed atmosphere was gone with his sudden change of conversation. “There must be another way.”

  “You read the pages. There is no other way.”

  “I’ll stay here. With you. I don’t want to go back.”

  His gaze swung to hers. Their eyes locked. “You don’t want to be an angel anymore?”

  She shook her head, a watery smile on her lips. “Not if it means I can’t have what we’ve found.”

  He regarded her silently, not wanting to start to believe what she’d just said. “Don’t you have to go back? I mean, surely you’d be missed from doing what you do.”

  “I’m here in flesh and blood. Free Will has been given to me. And this is what I choose, if, that is … if you choose it, too.”

  He stumbled to his feet, the chair skidding across the tiled floor with a screech. He lurched around the table and had her in his arms, pressing his mouth to hers, fingers splayed in her hair at the back of her neck, arms crushed across her back. He pulled back, so that he could speak. “Does that tell you how much I choose it, too?”

  Her glorious smile radiated a thousand suns and in an instant, his mouth pulled into a grin. Like riding a bike, he remembered he could do it. The heaviness that rested on his shoulders released. He tucked her head beneath his chin, laughing, a sound that was rusty. But good.

  God, how it felt so good.

  “Do you really mean it? You want to stay here, with me?”

  He felt her nod her head. “More than anything.”

  “But Angel, what can I offer you?”

  “You offer me so much. A life. To feel. A purpose. Love.”

  He hesitated and angled his head to look at her. She looked back, face shining, eyes gleaming. “Love?”

  She nodded, her breath brushed out on a breathy laugh.

  “You … love me?” All he’d shown her during her short time here was darkness and the worst in humanity. “How?”

  The lighthearted look she wore faded into something more serious. She glanced nervously up at his, eyelashes fluttering. “There’s more … ”

  He frowned. The euphoria of moments before sliding
from his grasp. There were no words, he could only wait as she nervously chewed her lower lip. She slid from his grasp and he stood there, empty now without her there. She turned, a story on her lips when Pete burst through the kitchen door.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He sent Angel a hesitant grin. “Wanted to spend some more time with the kids than I usually do this morning.”

  There was new life in his eyes, but Daman chose to ignore it, his enthusiasm dampened by Angel’s untold story and her abrupt behavior. “You could’ve been a little bit later,” Daman mumbled.

  Pete dropped some grocery supplies onto the kitchen table. “Thought I’d stop at the supermarket and pick you guys up some food. Did you say something?”

  Daman shook his head. “Nothing.” Although he wanted to cuff Pete by his shirt collar and shove him back out the door, he resisted. The man was doing them a favor by having them here, and now he was back, the urgency of the situation was more demanding. He had Pete’s help at his convenience and he couldn’t shut him out. Pete was doing him the favor. He faced Angel. “Tell me later, but now you’re back, Pete, there’s something we need to do. The plan’s changed, we’ve got to get to the priest,” Daman said.

  “What about Lepski?”

  “He’ll come later, believe me. For now, we go to the church. Father Joseph hasn’t returned my call, which is very unlike him. We’ll get to him first, then go to my apartment for the proof we need.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah. By nightfall, Lepski will be in custody or dead. Whichever comes first. I’ve got more to live for now, and I don’t intend to have Lepski keep me from it for a moment longer than he has to.”

  Pete gasped as Angel wound herself into Daman’s arms. Daman ignored the surprised look on Pete’s face as he swept Angel against his chest. He ignored the feeling that wanted to take her back to bed for the rest of the day and lose himself in her for hours. He ignored the nagging feeling that what Angel was about to tell him would change things forever.