by Alisa Woods
“That doesn’t matter.” The tremble in her lip betrayed that.
“Yes. It does.” He took a deep breath. His hands had minds of their own, leaving her shoulders and cupping her cheeks, which were infinitely soft. He could do it, right now—give her the life kiss—and all thought of abandoning her cause would vanish. She would be renewed and restored. It was all he could do to merely speak to her instead. “Ignore what I’m saying. I’m just an angeling. I know not God’s purpose for you. But I know he meant you to know him, and if your mind, which he created, is capable of bringing you to this realm, then who am I to say that is not exactly what you’re intended to do?”
Her eyes were wide and searching, and the soft feel of her cheeks in his palms was working a strange magic on his body. Loosening his bones. Making his skin tight. Stirring an angelsong deep in his soul.
He released her and stepped back.
He scarce could breathe, and she seemed equally affected, just staring at him with those wide blue eyes. And her soul… it shone. Every word he said was Truth, but that wasn’t why they spilled from his mouth. He was desperate to heal her… but even a touch was already rousing such Lust in him, his body reacting in ways he couldn’t begin to control. A life kiss would be reckless and dangerous. She needed to heal herself—and he felt certain that would come only through her work. Her vow. He had taken vows when he joined Raeph’s Chastity faction. He knew their power.
“Are you sure?” Lizza asked, breathless. His heart told him, Go to her. His pulse-pounded body said, You are sure you want to kiss her.
With all his willpower, he said, “You have to try, Lizza. It’s what you’re made to do.” And he was made to love and protect her kind. He was Protector Class, so protection was instinctive, but he already felt the tremors of love shaking him, body and soul.
There was no question in his mind—if he stayed near her, Temptation would win out eventually. It was just a matter of time. For now, he would get her safely home. Then, by all the angels in heaven, he would have to find a replacement to Guard her.
She was nodding, slowly, her gaze dropping to the floor and staring. “We’ll have to be careful,” she said quietly, then looked up. “I should talk to Charlotte before proceeding.”
“That is wise.” And he would likewise consult with his friend, Tajael—if for no other reason than to beg his help in finding a replacement.
She gave a single nod. “We should go back now.”
The tension holding him together loosened—he almost sagged with the release.
Then, without a word, he stepped close again and placed his hand on her shoulder.
He twisted away, opened an interdimensional door, and stepped through.
Three days.
Lizza tapped a pencil against her pad of paper.
Three days since the attack. Three long days of frustrating work and endless nights of restless sleep, knowing Oriel was pacing the living room, watching over her from within the wards. Always there… yet always far away. It was the same at the office. While she wrestled with the model she’d built—the numbers just weren’t coming out right—Oriel kept his distance, somehow always in the lab when she was in her office, or out front when she was in the lab.
It grated on her more than it should. But she was also short on sleep. Maybe that was it. Definitely not that she was obsessed with the man.
Lizza stopped tapping and tried going over the equations on her pad one more time. It was a good time to check the math—in case the latest simulation running on her computer bombed out again—but her eyes kept drifting to the tiny sketches mixed with the integrals. Angels. Dozens of them with their white paper wings. They flitted all over her pad, popping up in the middle of equations where angels definitely didn’t belong. And she knew exactly why, although it flushed hot embarrassment through her—she was obsessed, and not just with the man/angeling, but with his whole situation. Oriel said he was in this Chastity faction, which she guessed was one of the Virtues he kept going on about. And it was very clear that he thought sex was a Sin. It didn’t take a Ph.D. in physics to put 1 + 1 together and come up with, Oriel was a virgin.
Just like her.
She put the pencil between her teeth, chewing the wood in her frustration. Oriel wasn’t just a virgin… he was basically a monk. A virgin by vow, unlike her, who had simply never found the time to actually have sex. Or a relationship of any kind. So lame. And now… now that she’d finally found a guy who could tear her away from her work… he wasn’t even human.
Or interested in her.
It felt childish to be obsessed with a guy who was completely out of reach—childish and ironic and so cliché she was sure there were official diagnoses in psychological journals about this very thing. The lure of the unavailable man. But that wasn’t really it, at least, she didn’t think so. Oriel was one of the kindest, most considerate men she’d ever met. Probably because he was half angel. Was that it? Were her standards so impossibly high that only an angeling could fulfill them?
She tossed the pencil across her desk. It scooted and smacked against the stack of papers she’d plowed through in record time. All of that information was uploaded into her brain now, and with that, plus a whole lot of assumptions and few leaps of faith, she’d generated the mathematical model now chugging away with the latest simulation. If she could just get the numbers to trim out—or at least come close—they could test her theory in the lab. It would be an experiment that might leap them forward… or send her back to her pad with the angel sketches for more inspiration.
Divine inspiration. She smiled to herself. Oriel definitely inspired her, even if he was an epic-level distraction. Maybe they couldn’t do any more than talk—but at least they’d had that over the last three days. He’d always stuck to his end of the couch, keeping a safe distance between them. And he’d never again come close to that agonizing nearness, like when he was holding her face and looked 100% like he was about to kiss her… then didn’t.
But he wanted to. She was almost certain of that.
Which only made things worse.
She checked the run—still not finished. Dang it. She really hoped it would not spin off into an infinite loop that would crash her computer again. But sitting here staring at it would just make her crazy. She snagged her empty mug and hiked through the cubicle field to the break room. Her gaze roamed around, hoping for a glimpse of Oriel, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Stop obsessing! It felt like ordering the sun not to rise.
She swung open the break room door—Charlotte was inside.
“Hey!” Charlotte said, slowly bouncing her tea bag into her steaming mug. It had a picture of a light bulb and the words, Physics turns me on.
It was like the universe just wouldn’t quit with the reminders.
“Hey.” Lizza went to the Keurig for her caffeine fix.
“How’s the simulation going?” Charlotte asked. “The guys in the lab are itching to do another run. I told them we had to wait. Can’t be running every five minutes.”
Because they can’t keep dropping the wards. The two had to speak in code whenever other people might hear, but Lizza knew what she meant. The magical shield around the office kept everyone safe from another shadow angeling attack, and when they ran their experiments, the wards had to come down. Which wasn’t something they wanted to do unless they had a really good reason… because then everyone was at risk. Charlotte knew that Lizza knew—about the angels, the over-dimension, all of it—and she’d convinced Lizza that the right thing was to proceed, despite the risks. She said the angelings would keep them safe, and she would keep the technology secret until they’d worked out the ramifications for both the mortal and immortal worlds. Lizza had agreed to proceed, but she still had her doubts about the entire enterprise—she and Oriel were agreed on that. Lizza hadn’t told Charlotte about her trip to Oriel’s cell in his angel-leader’s Dominion. He’d sworn her to secrecy on that.
“I just can’t seem
to get the numbers to stabilize in the range the MRI needs to run,” Lizza said. “It’s making me nuts.”
“No worries,” Charlotte said as she squeezed the tea bag and tossed it in the trash. “No rush. It’s not like there are demons breathing down our necks or anything.” She gave Lizza a smirk. This talking-in-code thing was tedious, but most of the office wasn’t in the know—just the three main techs in the lab during the first attack, which apparently destroyed everything. They’d rebuilt from scratch, but obviously, no one wanted that to happen again.
Lizza sighed. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand the dangers… now. But they hadn’t really discussed it all that much. Her coffee was done, so she pulled it from the Keurig, let the mug warm her hands, and blew on it.
Charlotte’s eyebrows lifted. “Something on your mind?”
Lizza pursed her lips. Would it be totally inappropriate to talk to her boss about Oriel? Probably. But Charlotte and Tajael were together, and the circumstances were anything but normal.
“More like someone,” she said, ducking her head a little and focusing on her coffee.
“Hm.” Charlotte blew on her tea.
Ugh. Lizza would have to come out and say it. “It’s Oriel.”
Charlotte nodded and sipped her tea. “Mm-hm.”
This was a mistake. Obviously. “He’s fine. Ignore me. He’s great. I should get back to work.” Lizza wanted to flee the room but forced her steps to go slow enough she wouldn’t spill scalding coffee all over herself.
She only made it halfway.
“Close the door,” Charlotte called out. “So we can talk.”
Lizza stuttered to a stop and almost spilled her coffee anyway. She closed the door and turned. “We really don’t have to—”
“Yes, we do.” Charlotte blew on her tea. “I can’t have my bio-physicist unable to focus because a hot angeling is invading her thoughts.”
Lizza’s hunched-up shoulders fell. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah.” Charlotte smirked. “But I’ve been there, so I know what it’s like.”
Lizza edged back across the room. “I figured you and Tajael were together, but… I don’t want to pry.” She totally wanted to pry—but she couldn’t just ask straight out, How are you getting it on with Tajael when angelings don’t do the sex thing?
Charlotte’s smirk faded. “Did Oriel explain the dangers?”
Lizza frowned. Were they back to talking about the shadow forces? “He said the wards would protect us—”
“I mean the danger to Oriel.”
“What? No.” Lizza leaned back. What had she missed? “He said, well, that angels didn’t, you know…”
“Have sex.” Charlotte gave a small laugh. “We’re adults, Lizza. We can talk about sex.”
Lizza felt the heat rush her face. “Right. Sex. We can definitely talk about that.” Holy crap—what was she, like, twelve? But she’d never had super close friends, not the kind you would talk about this stuff with. And even those had drifted away after her parents had died. The heat in her face just intensified—it was embarrassing to be twenty-six years old and so clueless.
Charlotte was giving her a pinched look. “So Oriel didn’t explain that he could fall.”
“Fall how?” Lizza was confused again. Oriel wasn’t some old man who fell down—
Charlotte tipped her head back, squeezed her eyes shut, and shook her head. When she opened her eyes again, she was scowling. “Angelings. I’d forgotten how messed up Taj was about sex before.” She huffed a laugh. “You should see him now.”
If Lizza’s face got any hotter, she was going to spontaneously combust. “That’s okay. I don’t need to—”
“Figure of speech, Lizza.” Charlotte frowned at her again. “Okay, here’s the deal. Most angelings can’t have sex without falling into shadow—you know, the crazy-ass angeling with the black wings who attacked you? That. And once they fall, they don’t come back, okay? They’re kind of doomed forever.”
“But why?” Her heart was clenching. Maybe it really was impossible to be with him.
Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s seriously messed up. But it has something to do with their angel nature. Like… they’re constantly trying to live up to being actual angels—who are made of pure dimensional energy, by the way, and aren’t even close to being human—all while actually still being human, with human wants and needs and desires. And trust me… Tajael definitely has all the desires of any normal man.”
“But somehow he doesn’t fall when you… uh…”
“Have sex.” Humor glinted in Charlotte’s eyes.
“Have sex.” It was getting easier to say. “Why is he different?”
“That is a very good question.” Charlotte’s expression went serious. “And I don’t know the answer. All I know is that one day, he decided to take the risk—to see if he could without falling. And he did. And we’ve been having lots of sex ever since, so I’m pretty sure he’s not ever going to fall. Not from lust, anyway.”
“But it could have gone badly.” Lizza wasn’t even sure what this shadow force truly was, but she was sure Oriel didn’t belong with them.
“It could have. So if you’re thinking how nice it would be to make out with a hot angeling, I get it. And it is. But… just be really careful with that, okay?”
Lizza huffed. “He’s afraid to even kiss me.”
Charlotte nodded solemnly. “Other angelings have fallen with just one kiss. For their sake, I hope it was a good one.”
Lizza blinked. Holy crap, this was serious. And no way could she risk that with Oriel. She wouldn’t put someone in danger that she didn’t care about—and she cared a lot about him. If they had to just be friends, then so be it.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said, dropping her gaze and feeling the full weight of her obsessive thoughts. She hadn’t been thinking about what it might mean for Oriel… like, at all. “He’s a really great guy.” She looked up. “A really great angeling. He saved my life. The last thing I want is to hurt him in any way.”
Charlotte nodded. “Good.” She gave a small smile. “I know it’s hard. Because seriously, do they have to be so ridiculously hot?”
Lizza grinned. “And sweet and kind?”
“It’s really not fair.” Charlotte dimmed her smile. “But try not tempt him, Lizza. I’m serious. I’m sure it’s already hard for him.”
“Right.” Lizza nodded for emphasis. “It’s cool. I can be cool about it.” Heck, she’d practically made a living out of keeping her distance from guys. It was easy when they were jerks or creeps or borderline whatever. But still… she was an expert at being just friends. She could do this. “Okay, I’m going to get back to my simulation. Thanks for the talk.”
Charlotte raised her mug. “Go get us an experiment we can run! Everyone’s dying to move forward.”
“You got it, boss.” She smiled and booked it out of the break room.
Back at her desk, the sim was finished… and the numbers looked good! She didn’t even sit down, just ported the results over to her email and sent them off to Jimmy, the lead engineer in the lab. Then she hustled out of her cubicle to tell him the good news. When she swung open the SExI MRI lab door, Charlotte had made her way back there, which was perfect… but Tajael and Oriel were also there.
His soft brown eyes were on her in an instant.
Which only made her stumble to a stop, hand still on the door. She forced herself to not stare back, turning to Charlotte instead. All eyes were on her with the splashy entrance, including the three techs—Jimmy, Robert, and Tomaz.
“What’s up?” Charlotte asked with a side look to Oriel.
His gaze hadn’t wavered. He looked like a trapped mouse, startled by the sudden entrance of a cat. It made her heart hurt, now that she understood the real danger she presented. She gave him a quick smile and vowed to talk to him about it… after the experiment.
She nodded to Jimmy. “I sent you the new specs.”
>
He quickly pulled up his email on the monitor.
To everyone else, she explained, “I finally trimmed out the parameters for the Bounce Back run. I think we have a good shot at it.” She stepped fully into the lab and closed the door. Everyone inside knew the true nature of the reality around them so she could talk freely. “I think it’s worth bringing down the wards.”
“Then let’s do it.” Charlotte nodded to Tajael, who pulled out his phone. He would call the angelings stationed at the perimeter of the wards around the office. They could bring them up and down, plus they could coordinate the tactical response procedure for a run. All the angelings would move inside the office once the wards were down. They’d be cloaked—invisibility was apparently one of their powers too—and that way they’d be on guard if the fae or shadow angelings tried to capture either her or Charlotte. Since the attack, and his true nature was revealed, Oriel had transported her by interdimensional travel between the office and her apartment. That all happened super quick, and they were moving, so the danger was small. During the runs, she and Charlotte and everyone else were truly exposed. And if anyone was watching, they would know.
Jimmy was busy uploading the specs. Tomaz was checking over the settings for the high-speed camera while Richard pulled out one of the sixteen duplicate potted plants they had for the first-pass biological transports, labeling and weighing and preparing it for the run. The green tufts of grass sat straight up in the clay pot.
Oriel stepped up to her and gave her a small smile. It was protocol for him to stay nearby—he was her personal Guardian, just like Tajael was Charlotte’s, and that role was never more necessary than during a run. But she couldn’t help the trickle of pain through her chest, having him by her side, knowing there could be nothing more than a professional relationship between them. The irony was not lost on her—so many guys had wanted more than that from her, and the one time she was interested was the one time it was impossible.
Tajael and Charlotte exchanged one of those looks that blared their love from the other side of the lab.
