Archangel of Mercy (3 page)

Chapter Four

G
ABE
tossed the phone back at the woman who caught it one-handed. He might still not be able to remember anything, but things were finally falling into place.

This was Mephisto’s idea of a joke. And when Gabe caught up with him he was going to rip off his wings. Feather by fucking feather. Just because Mephisto was the oldest archangel in existence, the favorite of their bitch of a goddess and outranked any other archangel didn’t give him the right to mess with Gabe.

He had no idea how the bastard had managed to knock him out and transport him here or even the point of the whole thing but he had a more pressing question right now.

“How long have you known Mephisto?”

Her eyes widened in apparent bemusement, as if his sudden change in topic had thrown her.

“I don’t know anyone called Mephisto.” She sounded so damn convincing he wanted to reach inside her mind and throttle her thought processes. Yet for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he believed her. “Look, do you want me to take you to the hospital? Just so they can check that you don’t have a concussion or something?”

With monumental effort he clawed through his mind, trying to recall the blank moments between seeing Mephisto vanish, and him waking up here. On top of this damn female and with an excruciating hard-on. Arousal was flooding every cell of his body as if he’d been nanoseconds from orgasm. And despite the last few minutes, he
still
had a hard-on of massive inconvenience.

Concussion
wasn’t the first word that sprang to mind.

“Do you have any idea?” he said, giving her a glare that in the past had caused mortals to collapse in terror. This infuriating female merely stared right back, as if mesmerized. For a split second he lost his train of thought. “Any idea how dangerous it is to become involved in things you know nothing about?”

Instead of wilting beneath his condemnation she stiffened, as if she took offense at his tone.

“I happen to know a great deal about it. More than you appear to, anyway.”

He was so astounded that she was not only answering a rhetorical question, but contradicting him in the process, that he just sat there in silence as she continued to berate him. “Didn’t you feel those weird vibrations? Don’t you think that had something to do with all this?”

The words
weird vibrations
caused an eerie shudder of resonance along his spine but he ignored it. This primitive creature, who continued to pretend ignorance of his elevated status, was arguing with him.

His patience—not one of his few virtues in the first place—unraveled. If she refused to tell him what he wanted to know he’d find out by himself. With only a minimum amount of effort as befit her lowly perch on the evolutionary chain, he scanned the outer edges of her mind.

Instantly, psychic fire jabbed into his brain, so unexpected he recoiled.
She had rebuffed him.
It wasn’t possible that she’d been aware of his intrusion. It had been so superficial as to be virtually nonexistent.

All of which was irrelevant. Her mind had not only refused him entry, but it had actively fought back.

“What did you just do?” Her tone was accusing but there was a thread of sheer astonishment in her voice, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own question. “Did you try and get inside my
mind
?”

How did she know? Even the most psychically advanced humans were oblivious. It was only the primarily telepathic races that should’ve been able to pick up on such a mild scan.

He maintained eye contact, his irritation over the current situation fading into a reluctant fascination. “Do you have anything of interest inside your mind?”

Her lips parted in obvious disbelief that he hadn’t instantly refuted her accusation. “I don’t think that’s really the point, is it?” she said, gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.

On the more civilized worlds uninvited psychic scanning was considered morally reprehensible. Since that ruled out the vast majority of planets in the universe, Gabe had never before been confronted by an irate victim.

Normally, they either had no idea of his intrusion or, in the cases where he really dug in deep, they were in no state to confront anything by the time he’d finished with them.

Briefly he considered a deeper penetration of this woman’s mind. And then discarded it. Even a minor incursion could be fatal given the mental barriers she had in place. How had she managed to erect such a thing? Her protection would need years of training to perfect.

Which begged the question: Who had
taught
her?

And, probably more important, why?

“There must be something worth knowing inside your head.” He was faintly shocked to realize he meant the words. He could barely recall the last time he’d been interested in what went on inside the skull of a female he wanted sexually. “Otherwise why bother with such a sophisticated defense system?”

Aurora realized her jaw was in danger of dropping yet again, and clenched her teeth as a preemptive measure. It was bad enough she hadn’t imagined that sensual, silken touch on the outer edges of her mind. For a second she’d been so stunned by the contact she hadn’t grasped its significance. Because, despite all the research she’d conducted and people she’d met over the last few years, not one of them had possessed the kind of telepathic ability she had inherited from her mother.

She had never shared such an intimate link with anyone but her mum. She had no idea how such a link would even
feel
with anyone else. And yet on a primal level her shocked suspicion had been absolute.

He had attempted to invade her mind.

Not that it made any difference. Psychic or not, he still had no idea how he’d ended up here.

With difficulty she relaxed her death grip on her cell phone and tried to make sense of his last obscure remark.
Defense
system
?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. It was a horrible cliché and the look on his face suggested he thought so too. “Just don’t do it again, that’s all.”

His lips thinned, and for a moment she had the strangest compunction to apologize. After all, she had just insulted him. And she had no right questioning him really, did she?

Because he was . . . in the right.

The thought hovered in her mind, heavy and insistent. She frowned, felt her lips slowly part, felt the words forming on her tongue.

But she wasn’t sorry. She hadn’t insulted him. He might look like every girl’s wet fantasy but that didn’t give him the right to go around probing inside their minds.

At least, not in
her
mind.

She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue and the ridiculous urge to beg his forgiveness dissolved. If she didn’t know better she’d think he was planting those thoughts in her head. Except she knew he wasn’t because she couldn’t feel his intrusion the way she had felt him before.

“You were saying?” His voice was low, smoky and wrapped around her in a sensual caress. His eyes enslaved her, beguiling her into their magical depths. The lust she had managed to dampen down once again surged through her veins.

He was gorgeous. He knew it and had no compunction in using it to his advantage. She hitched in a deep breath, tore her gaze from his and glared at her clenched hands. To her relief the hypnotic imperative to plaster her body against him and offer herself like a sacrificial slave crawled back into the depraved depths of her libido.

His sexual pull was frightening. Lethal. His past was probably littered with broken hearts and broken promises and if she didn’t get rid of him soon she’d willingly be his next conquest.

She almost had been his next conquest.
She couldn’t quite figure out whether she was sorry or relieved she’d pulled back earlier. But no matter how much she still fancied him, the moment for mindless gratification had passed.

So long as she didn’t look back into his eyes.

“I think we should go back to the house.” She kept her gaze on her hands. “Then we can make plans on how you can get home.”

He didn’t reply. Didn’t move. Eventually she couldn’t stand it any longer and risked looking up at him. There was an odd expression on his face, as if he was attempting to process her words and finding it beyond him.

Somehow she couldn’t imagine there was much he found beyond his capabilities.

Still he didn’t respond. The silence stretched between them, taut and strangely brittle, as if the slightest wrong word might shatter the pervading peace.

“Don’t you think so?” She tried to ignore it, but his silence was unnerving.

“I think,” he said, looking at her as if she was a particularly exotic beetle he’d discovered crawling over his foot, “I could do with that whiskey.”

“Right.” Aurora refused to be insulted by the expression on his face. “Good idea.” She could definitely do with a stiff drink or three, that was for sure. She grabbed the framed flower, pushed herself upright and mentally winced when her knees began to shake. She hoped he didn’t notice. “Come on then.”

He shot her a look that suggested he wasn’t used to people telling him what to do. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to move, but then he expelled a pained breath and stood in a sensuous, graceful movement without needing to brace his weight on his hands at all.

Desire curled deep in her belly. Standing, she could admire his sculpted pecs and taut abdomen to their best advantage. As if fully aware of her furtive scrutiny he stretched, panther-like, biceps flexing as he linked his hands over his head. Dark gold hair dusted his chest, arrowing toward his unzipped jeans, and Aurora swallowed a groan of pure unadulterated lust.

He could probably taste the sexually charged pheromones radiating from her deprived body. But even that mortifying thought wasn’t enough to stop her visual feasting.

The corner of his mouth quirked, as if he was fully aware of her regard, and he rolled his shoulders, muscles bunching and relaxing as if he was deliberately trying to tempt her.

Mindless gratification hovered on her immediate horizon, assuring her the moment could too easily be recaptured, and it was more than tempting. Mesmerized by the allure of his body she watched, helpless to tear her gaze away, as he turned to face the woodland that bordered the property.

Her ravenous gaze licked over his powerful shoulders and froze, unbelieving. Two deep gashes ran from his shoulder blades down the length of his back. Her breath stalled in her throat, unnoticed.
Good god, what the hell had happened to him?

It looked as if an acid-drenched axe had sliced through to the bone, eating the flesh, distorting the muscle. Although the wounds were now healed and looked ancient, the passage of time hadn’t disguised how horrific the injuries must have been, or how agonizing.

Slowly he turned toward her, and despite how she tried to hide it she knew the shock ricocheting through her blood was clearly reflected on her face.

He caught her gaze, held it and she watched his mesmeric eyes darken with comprehension. And then he took one stride toward her.

Chapter Five

G
ABE
halted in front of the woman. She was no longer issuing orders as if she was his equal, or pretending disinterest when her arousal fragranced the air with devastating consequences for his libido. Instead, she looked as if she was about to faint.

He was used to mortals passing out in his presence. But usually they did that the second they met him, not twenty minutes later. Why would his scarred back cause her such trauma?

“You . . . Your . . .” She appeared incapable of coherent speech, but he had the strangest certainty it wasn’t because he now scared her to death.

“Yes?” The word was pure ice. He couldn’t figure out why her reaction affected him. He’d lived with his
disability
for millennia. It was who he was. And until now not a single mortal had ever dared to make even an oblique reference to his . . . lack.

She looked as if she wished she hadn’t said anything. He would make her wish a great deal more than that before he’d finished with her.

“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out, and her blue eyes appealed to him for mercy. “It’s just—you must have been very fortunate to survive such a terrible accident.”

Fortunate
and
survive
were not usually two words he associated with the horrifying circumstances surrounding the loss of his wings. He rolled his shoulders and could still feel, even after all this time, the phantom pull of muscles and feathers that had long since ceased to exist.

Bleak despair seeped from the fissures in his soul. He no longer possessed his wings but they would forever possess him; an intangible embrace as enduring as creation itself.

He shoved the memories deep into the abyss. After all these years it should have got easier to suppress the past. But it never had. He knew now it never would.

Deep in his heart he’d have it no other way. Because the alternative—
to
forget
—chilled the essence of his being.

“Do you have any idea,” he said, already knowing the answer, “what you’re talking about?”

She blushed and looked suitably mortified. “No. I can’t even imagine. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Before he could respond to her half-assed apology she looked up and their eyes meshed. “I do that. Speak before I think. Just ignore me.”

He had every intention of ignoring her. But damn, her eyes were pretty.

“This way.” She shot him a sideways glance as she clutched a silver frame to her breasts. Her copper-tinted hair was tousled, her eyes still captivatingly innocent. She barely reached his shoulder and her slender figure enhanced the inherent fragility of her species. He realized that far from ignoring her he could hardly take his eyes off her.

“So, um . . .” She was clearly still embarrassed by the way she’d drawn attention to his missing wings. Except, apparently, she didn’t know the significance of his scars. “What’s your name?”

For a second he thought he’d misheard her. In all his existence he couldn’t recall a single time when he’d had to introduce himself. Damned if he’d start now.

“What’s yours?” There was an edge in his voice. If he discovered this female was faking her innocence he’d take great pleasure in watching her brain leak out from her ears.

“Aurora Robinson.” She shot him another glance, a questioning expression on her face. He ignored it. If she didn’t know who he was, that wasn’t his problem.

It was novel, though. He’d often had females whose names he never knew or would forget within moments of having them. Not once had the situation been reversed.

Yeah, it was a novel sensation. But he wasn’t sure whether he liked it.

“You live here alone?” They were approaching a small stand of silver birches beyond which he caught glimpses of a stone-built farmhouse.

“No.” He caught a thread of irritation in her voice, as if his refusal to answer her question grated on her nerves. “This is my family home. I already told you I’m just here for the weekend.”

The house came fully into view, and some distance from it was an enclosure where two great wolfhounds, their bellies flattened to the ground, whined softly at their approach.

“Hey, boys.” Alarm filled Aurora’s voice as she took off toward them. It was a couple of seconds before he realized he’d been watching her butt as she jogged. “What’s the matter?” Still clutching the silver frame in one hand, she unbolted the gate to the enclosure. The dogs didn’t move and their dark eyes still riveted on him.

She crouched down, placed the frame on her knees and wrapped an arm around each dog. “Come on, guys, what’s up?”

Gabe leaned against the gate jamb, crossed his arms and watched her fuss over the dogs. There was nothing special about her. And although her eyes were pretty and her hair glinted copper in the sun, as humans went she was completely average-looking.

Although, admittedly, the freckles across the bridge of her nose were enchanting, there was nothing outstanding in her physical appearance to account for why he was still here.

Why he still wanted her.

Must have something to do with the way she had blocked his psychic scan.

The dogs broke free from Aurora’s arms and crawled on their bellies toward him. He saw Aurora’s mouth open in astonishment as she toppled onto her butt, and he sent her a mocking half-smile as her dogs wrapped themselves around his calves.

At least her dogs recognized him. He had no idea why he found that notion darkly amusing.

Aurora huffed as she scrambled to her feet and flicked him a resentful glance. “What are you, a dog whisperer?”

“Among other things.” It was odd, but seeing her so put out by her dogs’ behavior had extinguished his lingering anger. Now all that remained was the lust, which hadn’t diminished at all. “Are we having that whiskey or not?”

So what if she was indigenous to Earth? He would never see her again. And after he’d fucked her to their mutual satisfaction he’d find Mephisto and knock the shit out of him.

Sounded like a plan. He gave Aurora the benefit of his archangelic smile, the one that could dazzle even the most jaded of demi-goddesses. She squinted, as if the sun had temporarily blinded her, and stamped past him as if completely unaffected by his radiance.

He stared at her retreating back in disbelief. Had she just ignored him? How was that even possible? He turned and followed her through the back door and into the kitchen, the dogs on either side of him, their claws clattering on the flagstone floor.

“Make yourself at home.” She jabbed a finger at the timber table and chairs in the center of the kitchen and refused to make eye contact. He considered her remark, decided it wasn’t a demand and so hooked out a chair with his foot and sprawled on it.

“Whiskey.” He accompanied his command with a smoldering gaze. Part of him couldn’t understand why her belligerent attitude wasn’t annoying him. Yet it wasn’t. If anything the disagreeable frown she kept shooting his way made him harder than ever.

She put her silver frame on the workbench before turning to him. For a moment their eyes clashed and desire thudded in the air, hot and primal. He slid his hand over his thigh, a blatant invitation for her to join him. But instead of rushing to his side she folded her arms and stared at his naked chest. Within a second her gaze slid to the top of the table instead. He shifted on the chair and decided sitting had been a bad move.

“I’ll get you a drink in a minute.” Aurora took a deep breath and he watched her breasts swell beneath the thin fabric of her tank. He flexed his fingers, recalling the feel of her cradled in the palm of his hand.

The whiskey lost its enticement. He imagined bending her over the table, exposing her naked ass for his pleasure. Spreading her thighs and taking her from behind, while he raked his hand through her tangled chestnut hair. He could hear her erratic gasps of impending orgasm and could feel her wet sheath convulse around him. His cock was so damn hard it hurt.

“Come here.” His whisper throbbed with promise and he hooked a finger in her direction so she was under no illusion as to what he wanted.

Aurora gritted her teeth and clenched her hands, fingernails digging into her palms. It would be so easy to just walk across the kitchen, plaster herself across his lap and let him seduce her knickers off.

That was exactly what she’d wanted in those hazy, lust-drenched seconds after she’d plummeted from the astral planes. If she was brutally honest she still wanted it.

But no way was she going to give it. Never in her life had she met such an arrogant, up-himself jerk. He didn’t even have the common decency to look her in the eye when he spoke to her.

She conveniently ignored the times she’d given his crotch a furtive glance. She’d asked him a perfectly reasonable question, and he’d blanked her. Even after she’d told him her name, he hadn’t bothered to reciprocate.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d then hypnotized her dogs. She shot them a black glare at their treachery but they still only had eyes for the golden one.

“I need to know,” she said, focusing on the tabletop because despite her belated moral high ground, she had the despicable feeling that one look at his face would cause her principles to crumble. “What
exactly
you remember.”

“I remember . . .” His voice was smoky with the promise of hedonistic delights. She swallowed a groan. She might not like him, but he wasn’t making it easy for her to resist him. “That we haven’t finished what we started, Aurora.”

God, the way he said her name sent spirals of primal need through the core of her being. She resisted the urge to squirm, but it was a close thing. Instead she curled her toes, forced herself to remember he was . . . gorgeous . . . no, arrogant . . . and made the fatal error of looking up and catching his smoldering gaze.

For long seconds she remained captivated by the stunning beauty of his eyes. All she really wanted to do was drop to her knees, crawl across the floor and worship at his feet. She was vaguely aware he spread his thighs as if in invitation, and the imperative to go to him thudded with deafening insistence inside her mind.

She wrenched her mesmerized stare from his eyes to focus on his nose.
Which was also a thing of sculpted perfection.

“Are you . . .” Her voice was raw and scraped her throat. She swallowed, tried once more. “Are you messing with my thoughts again?”

She didn’t think he was. But he had to be.
She
would never imagine behaving in such a subservient way.

For a fleeting moment he looked nonplussed by her question. As if it was not only the last thing he had imagined her asking but also completely incomprehensible.

“Again?” He managed to sound offended. “I’ve never messed with your thoughts. Why should I?”

It would have been a fair question, if he hadn’t tried to enter her head earlier. That had been unforgivable and if he did it once what was to stop him from doing it again. Maybe he had an entire arsenal of mind-probing techniques at his disposal?

The problem was, she believed him. Which meant the desire to prostrate herself before him came entirely from her own warped, frustrated psyche.

She squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to harness her scattered thoughts.

“Do you remember
any
thing?”
Apart from how to use his cock.
She had no doubt he could remember how to use
that
. A hot flush crawled over her breasts and onto her face and a silent sigh echoed through her mind. It didn’t matter whether she looked at him or not. She only had to think of him to think of sex.

“What’s your obsession with remembering? Why does it matter?”

Her eyelids sprung open. He was still sprawled on the chair and he still looked like sin incarnate. And he didn’t look even the least bit concerned by the previous events.

A shiver skittered over her arms as a chilling possibility surfaced.

“Has this happened to you before?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. But it made a kind of scary sense. She had assumed, when he told her about the club, that he’d been, well, clubbing. But maybe he’d consciously entered the astral planes in Manhattan with the express goal of physically ending up somewhere else?

Not Ireland, obviously. But although he’d been clearly shaken by that bit of news he wasn’t that freaked out about it all. Was it possible he used a technique similar to the one she had intended to use to travel to her mother’s homeland?

“Not that I remember.” And then he grinned, as if he thought he’d just cracked the world’s greatest joke.

She needed space. Away from him so she could think rationally without every single thought becoming drenched with sexual implications.

“Right.” She swung on her heel and battled the urge to bury her face in her hands. “I’ll get us something to drink. Won’t be long.”

Gabe watched her all but run from the kitchen, as if she feared he might try and stop her. His grin faded into a frown. She might be only an indigenous female of Earth but she was turning out to be one of the most puzzling women he’d ever met.

Desire heated her voice, lust darkened her eyes. Her body language told him she found him irresistible. And yet she resisted him.

It had been a while since a woman had offered him a challenge when it came to sex. He had to admit that this strange encounter, while frustrating, was also extraordinarily arousing.

He stood and strolled to the workbench where she’d left her silver frame. He picked it up and frowned at the pressed flower beneath the glass. Inexplicably a shudder inched along his spine. The flower was fragile and faded and something—something wasn’t right about it.

Before he could scrutinize it further the dogs, both of which had followed him across the kitchen to lay at his feet, stiffened, their attention locked on the open kitchen door. And then, simultaneously, they leaped up, hackles raised, barking with such ferocity he reeled against the workbench and watched them hurtle into the hall.

Gabe dropped the frame onto the workbench and was at their heels as they skidded into a living room. Then he collided into their bodies as they came to a dead standstill.