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  Sheesh. Mister Physics here. “Okay, roughly four minutes.”

  “Give or take.” He narrowed his eyes as he thought. “That’s if we do a nose dive. If we spread our wings out, we might get six minutes.”

  I laughed. This had to be the most insane idea ever. I liked it. “All right, Pretty -boy. Count me in.”

  Chapter 19

  Raphael

  I’d discovered my soul mate. Ahia fought those boobie-birds like a rabid Chihuahua. She liked my pancakes. Her sense of humor was just as twisted as mine. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She’d thrown a bloody hydra head at me.

  Did I mention she wasn’t wearing a bra? I wanted her, and I wanted this to be an experience she could only have with an angel, that she could only have with me. And I’d need to act fast because acceleration and terminal velocity weren’t our only issues. She had to be at work, and I wasn’t about to be the one to make her late. For an Angel of Chaos, I got the impression responsibility was high on her list of important traits. Her co-worker was sick. She’d promised them she’d take the shift. She’d be there on time. And she’d be there breathless and sore in all the right places.

  I looked into those eyes, so dark brown that they were almost black. “Ready?”

  The edge of her mouth quirked up. “Catch me.”

  And off she flew, like a missile straight up in the air. I watched, partly to give her enough of a head start to make this fun, and partly so I could admire her ascent. Most angels flew in this form like they were drunken penguins. We didn’t approve of physical manifestations, which meant we didn’t get to use our wings in this plane, or for this type of activity. There were few angels who’d be able to fly like her, with the muscle control, the knowledge of thermals and cross winds, the mastery of aerodynamics as it applied to a human body with wings. I waited until she was barely a speck in the sky, then rocketed up after her, gaining altitude with powerful thrusts of my wings, then letting the thermals ease me up in an ascending circle.

  Watching her vanish into the white mists, I sped up and burst through the clouds. They were a thick floor beneath us, reminding me of Aaru except for the sharp blue of the sky and the golden heat of the springtime sun.

  I caught up with her at about twenty thousand feet. I was faster, and stronger, and I’d made it a habit of flying here every chance I could slip away from Aaru. As the distance narrowed between us, she pushed harder to keep her lead. And failed. I saw why once I got within ten yards of her. She was breathing hard, struggling to produce effective muscular action with the thin oxygen at this altitude.

  I scooped her up in my arms, plastering her against me chest to chest. Her wings still pushed, but I was the one driving us upward.

  “Can’t breathe up here.” She tried to put her arms around me and came upon my wings. Instead she gripped me at the waist.

  “Then don’t breathe. Stop thinking about it. You’re fine. Breathe or don’t breathe. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What are you, Yoda?” she muttered.

  She was scared. And she wasn’t about to let me know it either.

  “Mine, you are. Know it, you will,” I teased. Then I hiked her up further along my body so I could hold onto her ass. And I kissed her.

  She tasted of honey, cinnamon, and cayenne all rolled together. Her legs came around my hips and my hands dug into her rear. For good measure, I oxygenated her blood, and felt her melt into me. There were times for lessons, and there were times for fun. This was the latter and I wasn’t about to put all this effort into wooing an angel who was worried the whole time she was going to suffocate. Casanova now. Yoda later.

  With a thought, her shirt was gone. She squealed in surprise, pulling her lips from mine. I scooted her up higher, putting her breasts right where I wanted them. Then dipping into a barrel roll, I took one of her nipples in my mouth, flicking it with an undulation of my tongue as I sucked. She gasped, arching her back. The g-force, the feel of my mouth on her, the adrenaline of all we’d done today had her right on the edge. It had me right on the edge too. So I did what any good angel would do, I reached out with my spirit-self and enveloped her, merging and joining, taking enough of her that she felt a bit of what it was like to be an angel, but leaving her enough in her body that she still felt everything our flight and my mouth were doing to her.

  She tensed, then fell apart in my arms. Her surrender shocked me so much that I almost did the same, holding myself back at the last moment. I leveled out and eased her down my body slowly, pulling back my spirit-self, and kissing my way up to her neck.

  “Less than four minutes, and we didn’t even need the full distance,” I teased. “Quite the record.”

  “That was completely unfair,” she complained breathlessly.

  “It was totally fair. And so is this.” I made her jeans vanish and felt her warm and wet against my lower stomach. Everything south of my belt tightened painfully, straining against the unforgiving fabric of my pants.

  “I need to go to work.” She laughed, rubbing herself against me. “And I want to have time for our shower.”

  I groaned, nipping at her shoulder in retaliation. “We’ve got time for one more, this one at forty thousand like we planned.”

  She glanced upward, and I felt a spark of fear run through her.

  “I’ve got you. Do you trust me?”

  She looked down into my eyes, and I swear I could see right into her heart. “Yes. I trust you.”

  Her words took the breath right from my lungs. I was Raphael, the crazy one, the barely-an-Angel-of-Order. Besides my long-lost brother Samael, I was the archangel least loved in Aaru. No one trusted me — sometimes not even my own siblings. But she did.

  “Good.” I held her tight and shot upward, growing harder at her squeal of delight.

  The greatest pleasure always has an element of fear along the edge, so I took her all the way to forty thousand feet, feeling her shiver and gasp in my arms. Then I spun around lazily, making my pants disappear and feeling the bite of cold air against my balls. Thank the Creator I was an angel, because a human would have been the size of a bean sprout in this cold. Actually a human would have probably been dead long before he hit the ground at this height. It was good to be an angel. And it was beyond good to have another angel in my arms, warm and soft, her face pink with excitement.

  “Ready?” I dropped her hips down lower, feeling her warm folds brush against me. She better be ready, because I was not going to be able to hold on for long.

  Her pupils dilated, her lips parting as she breathed out an ‘oh’ noise. She arched her back, pulling her hips away from mine and sliding deliciously along my shaft, angling herself to hold me in position.

  “Ready.”

  She shifted her hips and drove them forward, shoving me balls deep inside her. Everything went white and for a moment I lost complete control. We plummeted from the sky in a freefall, twisting and turning. I began to rock my pelvis against hers, again enveloping her spirit-self with mine. My wings were useless, I could do nothing to stop our descent. All I could do was fill her, complete myself in her softness.

  I heard her make a soft cry and her lips claimed mine, confident and demanding as she matched my rhythm. Faster we fell, everything becoming a blur of sensation. I had no idea how far off the ground we were, how fast we were going. This was supposed to be me in control, carefully managing the experience for her. Instead I was frantic, desperate, her body and her spirit fulfilling a need that had gone unmet for all of my three billion years. She tensed, tightening around me and I felt myself swell and tighten in response. Somehow I managed to hold back as she came, the rhythmic clenching of her on my cock my undoing. I crushed her against me, my mouth plundering hers as I followed, spilling every bit of myself into her sweet warmth.

  And then I surfaced from this heaven, snapping my wings outward and twisting us into lateral movement just feet from the ground. The heels of her feet skimmed the icy water of the lake and she laughed, the sound like the vo
ice of God in my soul.

  Chapter 20

  Ahia

  I was pretty sure everyone at work knew I’d been screwing Raphael like a monkey. The way we walked into together, our hands brushing, the lust rolling off of us, the way our eyes met — it was like a giant neon sign over our heads that said “Fucking. Whole lot of fucking going on.”

  We’d played in the air as we flew back to my house after the frankly earth-shattering flight sex, having a round two on a mountaintop. Rafi ended up teleporting us back supposedly to save time — time we used to climb into the hot steam of the shower and do it all over again. I didn’t want to be at work right now. I wanted to be riding him in my kitchen, or bathroom, or on the living room couch, or out on the front lawn for all the neighboring werewolves to see. Heck, with the hearing they had I’m sure any driving by heard us in my shower. It wasn’t like either of us was particularly quiet or discrete.

  “I want you,” he muttered, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me against him. Oh lord, this angel would be the death of me.

  And there was a little voice deep inside my head that told me he probably would be the death of me. He was gorgeous. He was fun. He made love like he’d been perfecting the art for billions of years. I was falling for a guy who was known for flitting from one entertaining experience to another, and when our project was finished and he left Alaska, he’d take my heart with him. But I was in too deep to back away now. Crazy, careless, reckless woman that I was, I’d move full steam ahead, giving every bit of myself — body, heart, and soul to this angel. And as painful as his leaving would be, our time together would be worth every tear shed. These were the kind of memories that made life worthwhile, no matter how bittersweet they might be.

  “I want you too, but I have to work.” I couldn’t resist giving him a quick kiss, running my hand down his back to squeeze his ass. Wasn’t like anyone was watching us. Okay, maybe they were, but I didn’t care.

  “Nine o’clock?”

  My quitting time. “Maybe ten after. I have to lock up and pull the bank deposits.”

  His fingers stroked my cheek. “I’ll be back.”

  He better. “Not soon enough.”

  “Oh, I will definitely be back to get you, Hot-stuff.” He kissed me again, and this time it was more like we were making out smack in the middle of the store where I worked. The door chimed. We broke our kiss, and with a wink he left.

  I immediately felt cold and lonely without his presence. Yeah, I had it bad. How could I fall so hard in two days? It was crazy, but I was crazy. He was crazy too. And the feelings I had for him went so far beyond simple physical attraction. I’d never met anyone so fun, so powerful, but so light-hearted. He was an Alpha without all the seriousness. He was someone I’d love for the rest of my seemingly immortal life.

  Because I did love him. In this short time, I’d gone from not even knowing him to feeling like he was a part of me, like I’d only be half a person, or angel, without him by my side. Grinning like a fool, I turned around and saw who’d just come through the door — Brent and Zeph.

  Zeph’s eyebrows were practically on the ceiling. “Okaaaay. I’m going to just go to the Fjord for a few beers right now. Leaving right now.”

  He backed his way out the door and practically ran once his feet hit the sidewalk. That left me, and a scowling Brent.

  “I need to clock in.” I turned around and marched to the back. He was still there when I came back, leaning on the counter next to the register. I had customers, but they were all browsing. Ignoring the elephant in the room, or werewolf in this case.

  Jess shot me a perceptive glance. “I’m leaving. Try not to get blood on the jewelry display, okay? I just cleaned it.”

  “See you Monday,” I told her, watching as she grabbed her purse and headed out.

  Brent still stood at the edge of the counter, looming. Scowling. Waiting. I decided to put the whole thing off and made the rounds asking the various customers if they needed assistance. Two teen girls off the cruise ship looking at wolf figurines. A woman and her two sons checking out the T-shirts. An older guy perusing the salt-and-pepper shakers. And a woman who looked to be in her early forties, who smiled sheepishly when I asked if I could help her and admitted that she was just waiting for the bus to pick her up for a hiking and rock-climbing tour.

  There was no avoiding him. Brent wasn’t going to leave and I couldn’t circle around the shop for seven hours. Readying myself for battle, I walked back to the register, putting the counter between us and folding my arms across my chest.

  “Yeah?”

  He glared. “I thought you told me there would be no romantic encounters in hunting down monsters.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t realize that things like lopping the heads off a hydra would be such a turn-on. There’s an attraction there, Brent. I’m not going to deny it.”

  “You have no restraint, do you?” he snapped. “You want it, you take it, regardless of who gets hurt. Regardless if it’s you who gets hurt.”

  “Well, why not?” I snapped back. “Try living for five thousand years, watching those you love age and die right in front of you like time lapse photography on super speed. I’ve got to take what I want right away, because tomorrow it’s gone and I’ll never get the chance again.”

  The anger drained out of him. His eyes full of sympathy as he reached out and touched my cheek. “He’ll hurt you, Ahia. He’ll waltz out of your life, break your heart and toss it aside without a care. He’s an angel. Even if he doesn’t tell the others about you. Even if he keeps your secret, he’ll ruin your life.”

  “You don’t know that. I think…I think he really cares about me.”

  Brent’s mouth twisted. “He might care about you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t happily walk away in a few weeks once he’s done here. He’ll go back to Aaru, back to all the other angels, and remember you fondly. He’d probably be surprised at how you wanted and expected more. I know you, Ahia. You love deeply. You’ll want what this angel will never be ready to give.”

  Brent was right. Even if Rafi did care, even if he loved me, I had no idea what that meant for angels. The only reference for any sort of relationship I had was humans and werewolves. I doubted I’d get the white picket fence, his and her four-wheelers, and a three-tier wedding cake with Rafi. My parents obviously hadn’t stayed together or reunited. And they’d dumped me. Even if they meant to return, it had been five thousand frickin’ years.

  Maybe that was normal for angels. We’d love, then he’d leave and maybe in a hundred thousand years or so swing by to catch up and reminisce. And he’d be confused and surprised that I’d ever wanted something different, something like what the humans had.

  Whatever Rafi’s intentions were, it was too late for me to back away now. And I was determined to enjoy what we had. “I can’t help myself. Let me have this one moment, Brent. Let me have a day in the sunshine, then I’ll go back to the same thing I’ve been doing for the last five millennia.”

  His smile was sad. “I guess I can’t forbid this as your Alpha?”

  I snorted. “I’m not a werewolf.”

  “You are to us. For hundreds of years you’ve been our First, a Nephilim. And I’m still your Alpha.”

  They were my family. I might have more in common with Raphael than this werewolf before me, but he was right. He was my Alpha. They’d sheltered me, given me a home, loved and cherished me for their oh-so-short lives, which was more than any angel had ever done.

  But I still wasn’t giving in. “You can forbid all you want, Brent. I’m your First. I’m not bound by your orders, I’m your counsel. I’m the devil in your ear making sure you think through your decisions. I’d be a crappy First if I let you order me around. I’m going to have my wild fling with this angel, and I hope you’ll be there to pick up the pieces when he’s gone.”

  He cupped my chin in his hand, leaning across the counter to place a quick kiss on my forehead. “Always. I’ll bring the ice crea
m, a stack of movies, and a strong shoulder to cry on.”

  And he would too, because that’s what best friends did. With a quick pinch of my chin he turned to the door. And everything exploded.

  Literally exploded. One moment there were tourists shopping, a woman waiting for her tour bus, my best friend headed toward the door. The next there were chunks of concrete and glass flying. Something hard hit my midsection and flung me across the room, smashing my back into the wall. I felt bits of glass cut my skin, a metal pole stab through my shoulder, the cash register whack me in the head. Light so bright it was like knives stabbing into my eyes filled the room. Bits of metal and cabinet embedded themselves into my legs. I felt the warm trickle of blood drip down my face.

  When the dust cleared the store looked like a demolition zone. Cars screeched and crashed in the street outside. I heard people screaming. Racks and display cases were destroyed in a circle radiating out from the rift that had opened to encompass nearly ten square feet of what had been the store. Two dudes in beige raggedy clothing, hoods over their heads, stood, staring at torn T-shirts and shattered coffee mugs.

  Wait. Who were these guys? They looked like a cross between scuba divers and Bedouins. Like something from a science fiction movie, only without the lasers.

  One spread out two sets of arms, the first set from where I’d expect his shoulders to be and the second from somewhere around his waist. From under the hood came a clicking noise. The other extended a stick-like item, and shot a pulse of light that hit what was left of the jewelry case.

  Great. They did have lasers.

  Time seemed to hold still while my mind worked in overdrive. I was cut and bleeding, a pole sticking through my shoulder. The jewelry case, at least what was left of it, was now on fire. One of the raggedy guys had turned toward me, treating me to a view of goggle-covered eyes and a scaled, elongated jaw that extended a good seven inches from his face, ending in what looked like a metal grill of a mouth.