“Bite…” He buried his hand in her hair again and kissed her harder. Lost himself to her.
Maybe for the last time. Any second now, he would be removed from this plane of existence. God had returned his sword to him, but the fallout from Erah’s actions would rock Heaven for an eternity. The repercussions would be far-reaching.
The fact that Erah had hidden his state of mind, his actions from Nathanial for so long was unsettling, but then, Nathanial was a fallen. So much of his old existence was now denied him.
That Erah had kept it from those higher on the hierarchy, however, was astounding.
Would God allow Billie to keep her memories? Could Nathanial convince Him to leave her alone?
She Will Only Be Alone If You Deem Her To Be So.
The deep, calm voice filled Nathanial’s head.
The One voice. His voice.
Pulled away from Billie, he stared at her.
“What?” she said.
You Have A Choice To Make, Nathanial.
Nathanial drew a deep breath. A choice? What kind of choice?
The particles in the room swirled and shifted, and Nathanial’s sword appeared once more, hanging blade down in the air beside him.
Heart pounding, he studied it.
It Is My Will For You To Have It Again. Take Your Sword, And Resume Your Place In Heaven.
Heaven. His home. His old life.
He swallowed.
“Nathanial?” Billie whispered. “Are you okay?”
He looked at her. At his sword. At her.
Her. His reason for drawing breath. His purpose now.
Take The Sword, Nathanial. There was a pause. A silent offering. Or Don’t.
“I choose don’t,” he whispered. cupping Billie’s face. “I choose life with her.”
Good Choice, the deep, calm voice said. I Approve.
Nathanial smiled, gazing into Billie’s eyes. Why am I not surprised?
There was a cavernous laugh. I’m Omnipotent, Remember? Most Of The Time.
Why can Billie can see my wings? Why can she hear me speak Enochian? Did you do that?
Sometimes, I Feel Like Bestowing Something Special Upon Those I Love.
Nathanial’s throat thickened. Such a simple explanation, but it said so much.
And yet… Swallowing, he frowned. Did you know? What Erah was doing?
I Was Aware Of The Intensity Of Your Brother’s Emotions For You, But I Hoped He Would Not Succumb To Them.
Is he—
Be Well, Nathanial. I Will Be Watching.
A rush of golden rapture flooded through Nathanial. His wings flexed. Fluffed. And tucked back into their restful position. Not gone. But restored to their full strength and splendor.
He laughed, enough for Billie to frown. “Want to tell me what’s going on? Anything to do with the sword floating in the air a moment ago? And the fact your wings seemed to get a some kind of upgrade before shimmering out of sight?”
His sword, his wings… So many things Billie should never have been aware of, and yet she was. Clearly God had known so much more than what was going on all along. His sword never would have been returned to him if it hadn’t been God’s will. Of course, Nathanial would get no answers if he asked. Things didn’t work that way up there. And really, the only answer he needed was currently kneeling in front of him, eyebrows dipped in a slight frown.
“I just found out I’m welcome back into Heaven,” he said.
She grew still. “Oh. So you’re not…a fallen angel anymore?”
He smiled. “I’m not.”
“Oh.” She pulled away a little. “So you’re a full angel again?”
“I am.” The potency of his life force surged through him. A rush rivaled only by his feelings for her.
“So that means you’re—”
“Staying right here.” He laced his fingers through hers. “With you. If you’re okay with—”
She launched herself at him. Flattened him to the floor. Kissed him.
Until he groaned with a desire so deep and absolute, the endless entirety of his soul shook.
“Hello,” James called. “I’m still here.”
With another groan, Nathanial rolled Billie onto her back and tore his lips from hers. “Are you dying, Jimmy?”
“Let me check.” A pause. “No.”
“Do you need an angel to help you?” Nathanial raked his gaze over Billie’s face. She grinned. God, he loved how her eyes twinkled with mischief. How her whole face lit up with playful delight.
“Let me check again,” James called back. Another pause. “No. Again.”
Nathanial smiled at Billie. “Then sod off, djinn.”
“Okay.” Laughter threaded through James’s answer.
Nathanial grinned. “Oh, and Jimmy?”
“Yeah, Feathers?”
“Thank you.” He brushed his thumb over Billie’s bottom lip. “Seriously, thank you. For keeping the woman I love safe.”
A low chuckle wafted over from the floor. “Remember that when I tell you it’s your turn to clean out the office fridge.”
“I like him,” Billie murmured, lips curling. “Can we keep him?”
Nathanial laughed and kissed her again.
“Ummmm,” James said, voice sheepish. “Maybe I do need an angel’s help, after all.”
Nathanial looked up at James, now standing beside them. “You look battered and weary, my friend.”
“I took on a demonic stalker psychopath powered by jealousy. Of course I’m weary.” He scrubbed at his chin. “And apparently I can’t currently, y’know, poof away.” He made an exploding gesture with his hands and ducked his head with a contrite grin. “Sorry.”
Nathanial rolled his eyes and, with a smile and a wave of his hand, returned James to the Guarded Souls office.
Billie narrowed her eyes. “Can you do that kind of thing with anyone, or just nonhumans?”
“Why?”
“There’s a TV critic who really ticks me—”
He silenced her with a kiss.
“Okay, maybe just with the trash then,” she murmured when he moved his lips to her throat. “If that’s allowed.”
“We’ll talk about it after,” he said, sliding his hand down her side and back up to her breast.
She lifted an eyebrow, legs wrapping around his hips. “After what?”
He grinned.
“Ever considered the joys of sharing a shower with an angel?”
Epilogue
Deanna Rhames rolled onto her side and looked at the place where her husband had slept for the last twenty-five years.
He wasn’t there. He never would be again.
“I miss you, bear,” she whispered, brushing her fingertips over his pillow.
Her soul ached. Her heart did as well. Would it ever stop? The pain? Would it ever go away?
A tear slipped from her eye, as it had every morning, every night since Roanon had been killed.
“I miss you so much. I can’t do it. I can’t go on like this. I can’t…not without you. There’s no… I just can’t.”
She couldn’t. It hurt too much.
Today. Today she would take the pain away. From her soul, and from their little girls’ souls.
Take the pain and the hurt away, end it forever.
She brushed her fingers over Roanon’s pillow again. “Today, bear. I’ll see you later to…”
The softest sound of feathered wings kissed the air—and with it, something warm flowed through her.
Hope. Strength.
And a certainty it was going to be okay. It was all going to be okay.
Pulling a deep breath, Deanna gazed at Roanon’s pillow, pictured him lying on it, smiling at her.
“I’ll see you soon, bear.” Her own smile stretched her lips, as warm as the new hope in her soul. “I will. But not today.”
She climbed from her bed and went to wake her girls. Today was the most perfect day to go to the park.
Epilogue T
wo
James materialized in the Guarded Souls kitchen, perfectly seated on one of the chairs at the table in the center of the room. Stark naked.
“Funny bastard, Feathers,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Nim blinked at him—a fork twirled with noodles halfway to her mouth. “Does this mean Nath is okay? I’ve been stress eating ever since he translocated out of the warehouse in Compton.”
James dressed with a click of his fingers—jeans, a white shirt, and bright red Chucks—and made a bowl of spicy Singapore noodles appear in his hand. “Feathers is fine. I left him snogging on the floor with the love of his life.”
Nim grunted. “Ah, to be so lucky to have found love, ’eh?”
James let out a wry laugh, even as his heart began to thump faster. “Yeah, if only.”
He looked at the noodles in his hand, and replaced them with a Scotch egg. A favorite treat from a life he’d once had, shared with a woman forever denied him.
Shite, why did he have to go and think about her?
“If only,” he repeated, before making the Scotch egg disappear.
Pushing himself from the table, he got up and walked from the room.
He suddenly wasn’t hungry for food anymore.
The End
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading!
Welcome to my new series. It’s been a while since I got lost writing paranormal romance, but wow, did I love writing Destiny’s Knight. I hope you loved reading it. The Guarded Souls series will follow the motley-crew staff of the Guarded Souls Security and Protection Agency, with Hope’s Wish (James’s story) releasing soon. You won’t believe what’s in store for James the Djinn.
* * * *
If you enjoyed Destiny’s Knight, sign up for my newsletter The Lexxicon HERE.
You’ll receive a FREE copy of my (erotic) paranormal short story, The Cavern, plus never miss out on new release announcements.
Sincerely,
Lexx
Preview another book by this author
Sera’s Dragon
Fire Mates, Book 1
Lexxie Couper
Chapter 1
Sydney, Australia
Heartburn sucked. Even for a dragon shifter.
Tyson Conley pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum and rubbed in a slow circular motion, knowing it would do sweet F.A. to relieve the pain. This is what he got for eating spicy meatball pizza. Every friggin’ time, he ended up in hell. At some stage of the game he was going to learn his lesson.
He could already feel the insidious heat radiating up through his throat from his chest, but whereas a human would pop a Mylanta or two and be done with it, he was now in for a scorcher of a time. Thankfully he couldn’t exhale fire in his human form, but that didn’t stop the inferno in his chest from making him wish he were dead. Damn, it felt like the lining of his digestive tract was being scalded to hell.
Ty let out a growl, a thoroughly bestial sound that made the old duck sitting at the table next to his flinch. She stared at him, washed-out blue eyes wide behind her thick glasses.
He gave her an apologetic smile, fighting the urge to fidget in his chair. “Sorry.” He pushed the remains of his pizza away. He was done. If Ryan ever turned up, he could eat the rest of the damn thing. As far as Tyson was aware, spicy meatballs only made his younger brother more—
A million pinpricks of fire raced abruptly over Tyson’s flesh. Then another million. His breath caught, his mouth went dry and, despite feeling like he was about to spontaneously combust, he felt frozen.
What the hell?
The old duck beside him glared, thin mouth puckered with disapproving disdain. He must have made a noise to warrant her obvious ire once more. What it was, though, he didn’t have a bloody clue. Another growl? A groan?
Invisible fire swept over his skin again, hotter this time—so much hotter. And purposeful. Shooting over his skin like an inferno until his dick was so fucking hard he wanted to cry out in pain. And pleasure. Oh God, did he want to cry out in pleasure.
Holy shit…
The mating fire.
Tyson twisted in his seat, frantically looking around the beachfront café even as he felt like he was burning up. No one stared back. No one gazed at him with open hunger. No one stalked toward him with single-minded purpose or made coy goo-goo eyes from afar. The only one paying him any attention was the old duck with the sour-lemon face, and there was nothing hungry or sexual about the way she stared at him. She looked as if she were about to pull an Uzi from her handbag and save the world from a psychopath.
She leaned toward him, eyes narrowing behind her pink glasses. “Are you on drugs, son?” Her lips—painted the same pink as her coke-bottle glasses, Ty noted in a brief moment of surreal detachment—pursed tighter. “Are you tripping?”
Fresh fire scalded his flesh, so hot, so intense, he gritted his teeth. His cock throbbed with such impatient insistency he feared he was going to erupt. He blinked at the old woman. Opened his mouth. Closed it. His throat wouldn’t work. His balls felt ready to burst.
Mating fire? How could he be experiencing the mating fire? Since when were there female dragon shifters in Syd—
A woman jogged toward the café, holding the leash of a massive animal that could be a dog but looked more like a hairy…thing…loping beside her. She moved at a leisurely pace, dark-red ponytail flipping behind her head like a dancing flame, slim body radiating energy, breath slipping from her in streams of delicate mist Tyson knew only he could see.
She ran past the café, dog-slash-thing keeping pace, and Tyson’s entire body went up in flames. Heat and lust and want. Need.
Urgent need. Hungry want. Dire lust.
His heart slammed into his throat. His mate. His Fire Mate. Fuck, he’d seen his Fire Mate. And she was—
He bolted to his feet, stare locked on the woman jogging through the crowded footpath. His table went skidding, bumping into the old duck’s. The remains of his pizza clattered to the floor, along with his untouched beer, his phone and the old duck’s glass of wine. Beer and wine splashed his ankles, dribbled inside his shoes, but he didn’t care. He had to catch her. Had to—
“Sonny,” she hissed. “Do you know you’re making noises like a—”
Dragon.
The word reverberated through his head, drowning out whatever word the old duck had used just as the crowd swallowed up the jogging woman.
Dragon.
He was making noises like a dragon. A dragon in heat.
He was making noises like a dragon in heat because he was a dragon in heat. And Christ on a pony, his Fire Mate had just jogged by, oblivious to his existence, triggering the mating fire—and she was human.
Human. How the fuck could she be human? Surely he was wrong. True, he didn’t detect the distinct honeyed-sulfur scent all female dragon shifters exuded…but since when did dragon shifters mate with humans?
Since never, that’s when. They may fuck them every now and again, but mate with them?
No. It wasn’t possible.
Of course it isn’t. So tell that to your body.
His body, however, wasn’t listening to logic and millennia-old fact. His body was well and truly on its way to shifting—shifting for fuck’s sake!—and unless he did something soon, something drastic and/or crazy, the busy Bondi Beach esplanade was going to find itself plus one very horny, very large, very medieval mythological dragon.
He stumbled away from his table, trying to find the woman—his mate—in the flow of pedestrians filling the footpath that ran between the café and the beach. He had to get to her. What the hell he was going to say, he didn’t know, but he had to get to her and, if nothing else, kiss her. And hope to all things holy that simple contact would quell the shift.
“Sonny, did you know you have a very large erection?” his ever-informative elderly neighbor asked, hissing again, her voice somehow punching through his stunned disbelief.
Tyson blanched. He jerk
ed his gaze back to her, down to his groin, to the bloody obvious hard-on tenting his cargoes, and then back to the woman. “Err…”
She smirked, and for an insane moment, she didn’t look old at all. Or duckish.
And then fresh fire razed Tyson’s flesh, licked at his balls, his groin, and he forgot about old ladies. Fresh fire accompanied by a bone-deep shudder, and he knew his Fire Mate had turned around. She was jogging back toward him.
Fast.
He bolted. Vaulting over chairs, tables and the café’s neat row of potted palms. There was a shocked shout from behind him, a few loud what the hells, a bray of stunned laughter—and then nothing.
Nothing but the thumping of his heart and the roaring of blood in his ears.
Bloody hell. He was about five minutes away from an uncontrolled and unwanted shift into dragon form, he was still fighting a mean case of heartburn and he was sporting an erection the size of a cricket bat. What a perfect first impression to make on the complete stranger he was going to kiss right here on the busy Bondi Beach foot—
He ran straight into her.
There was a startled oof, a growl, a warm and firm body pressed to his…followed by an explosion of heat over his flesh, through his body, into his soul.
Two wide, stunned blue eyes stared up at him—and then Tyson crushed her lips with his. He kissed her and invaded her mouth and let the demand pounding through his body be consumed by her sweet, destined blaze.
A stranger’s tongue was in Sera’s mouth. In her mouth.
Holy smack, a stranger’s tongue was in her mouth. Rolling and sliding over her tongue. The stranger was kissing her. No, not just kissing her. He was fucking her mouth. Making goddamn love to her mouth with his tongue while something long and thick and wicked hard that was most likely an impressive erection poked at her belly. He was cupping her right breast in a strong, kneading caress, teasing her hard nipple, and what was she doing?
Just what the hell was she doing?
Was she fighting him off? Was she pushing him away and kicking him in the balls? Was she letting Hannibal rip said kicked-in balls off?
Destiny's Knight: A Fallen Angel Protector Paranormal Romantic Suspense Book (Guarded Souls 1) Page 17
