Embrace, Entice, Emblaze (23 page)

He stopped at my lips and whispered, “Tell me to kiss you.”

In that moment I almost craved it, but I also remembered my

kiss with Lincoln. I stayed where I was and whispered back, “I…I don’t want to hurt you.”

Something overcame him; he let out a small cry and hung his

head, resting his forehead on mine. We stood like that for a minute.

I felt the weight of eons of pain pass through him.

Then, rather than waiting for me, he kissed me. I could feel the 189

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sense of resolve in his action. I tried to ignore the senses, but as I opened myself up to him, they all merged into one sparking energy, like a firework crackling between us. He felt the change and drew me closer. Then he stopped, pulling back just enough to speak.

“Can I do something?” he asked.

“What?”

He half laughed. “Trust me?”

It was a bigger question than he realized. “Okay,” I said softly.

He slid his arm from around my waist and took hold of one of

my hands. I felt the sparks of energy flare between us just as before, and then he kissed me again, but this time he
really
kissed me.

He pulled me tight, arm still wrapped around my body. His other hand slowly crept up my arm, fingers trailing lightly. As his tongue moved into my mouth, the flavor of apple was pushed aside as he brought something else: the taste of pure…seduction.

The sparks of energy flickered and then stopped. I could feel

them building, like millions of tiny water balloons filling up. He felt me tense. “Let go,” he whispered into my lips.

I wasn’t sure what to do and I considered pulling away, but he

drew me closer and then it exploded. Millions of bubbles of emotion washed over me. Incredible desire, lust,
love
poured through my body. Every part of me was completely aware of every part of him, and as he kissed me, it was as if he opened a portal to himself. I knew he wanted me, knew he wanted all of me. I felt his jealousy and possessiveness; it was all- consuming and…scary. But there was no denying, as he bled into me, that I wanted it too, wanted him, 190

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was completely seduced by his emotions. In that moment, I would have done anything he commanded of me.

I tugged at his T- shirt and he complied, pulling it off in

a microsecond. I was barely separated from his lips. I ran both hands down his sculpted back. He lifted me, hoisting me onto the kitchen counter, never breaking contact with my lips. Everywhere I touched, it was like tasting a new flavor of emotion, but always there, lingering, was the taste of seduction…jasmine and vanilla.

Somewhere, far away, part of me was screaming for control, but

I didn’t care. The part of me that was under Phoenix’s influence was relishing the freedom. He scrunched the back of my top in

his hands. He was pulling at it, tugging and tightening it around me, but not taking it off. I could feel how much he wanted to,

could feel his struggle. I wanted him to take it off—
rip
it
off
if he had to. The wave of desire rolling through me empowered me. I

knew it wasn’t all my emotion, but what
was
me was intensified and without boundaries. It was…bliss.

I grabbed at my shirt, to take it off for him. He gripped my

hands, holding them down by my side. I felt him shaking as he

fought for self- control. He made a deep growl, and then, defiantly, he took a breath and I felt the emotion slide away. He slammed

the barriers up between us. All my other emotions— guilt, self-

consciousness— rushed back. It was a nasty comedown. A big part of me just wanted him to turn on the tap again and take me back to bliss. But then there was the other part.

“What did you do to me?” I couldn’t control my breath.

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He took a moment, picked up his T- shirt, and turned around

as he put it on, tugging it down over his pants. I blushed when he turned to look at me.

“It wasn’t all my emotion, you know.”

“That doesn’t matter! You took away my control.”

I set about making more coffee, trying not to look at him. As

soon as I reached for a clean cup, I felt myself launching it across the kitchen. The white ceramic shattered into tiny pieces, ricocheting over the floorboards.

He was surprised but didn’t avert his gaze. He kept watching

me, piercing me with his dark eyes. “I know you enjoyed it,” he said in his familiar seductive tone.

“That’s not the point. I couldn’t stop you!” Before he could open his mouth, I added, “It doesn’t matter what you think you know, Phoenix. You don’t know everything about me!”

I got the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard and started to

sweep up the mess.

Phoenix made no move to help. I don’t think it even occurred to him. He grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and rolled it in his fingers, watching me.

“I’d never let you make a choice on a kiss and then let that lead to more than what had been agreed. It would be…”

“Bad?” I offered, as he struggled for a word. He didn’t get it, didn’t realize how important it was to me to have control. Only one person ever truly got it.

He smiled. “Violet, I hate to tell you this, but
bad
?” He raised 192

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his eyebrows. “Bad can be a lot of fun. No, the word I was looking for was…cheating.”

I blushed and suddenly felt
very
young and inexperienced. “Just don’t do it again.”

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chapter
twenty

“I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and
I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I
have made.”

genesis 7:4

I holed up in my art studio. It was the one place I could go where I knew Phoenix wouldn’t follow me. After our disastrous kiss— or rather, my disastrous reaction to it— I expected him to just let himself out. So I was surprised to fi nd him still sitting in the living room when I emerged a while later.

I didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell him to go, so I just ignored him. I really should have been studying— exams were due to start after break and I’d barely picked up a book. In the end, the overwhelming need to crawl up on the couch with a fll uff y pillow and blanket and watch the movie channel, while gorging on salt-and- vinegar chips, won out. Apart from everything else, not having Lincoln around had caused my diet a great disservice.

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I barely had the remote in my hand before Phoenix asked for a

play- by- play of last night’s murder scene. I was tempted to just tell him to go away. I wasn’t impressed by how his “trust me” request had worked out, but I could also feel myself starting to calm down.

Then I realized Phoenix was probably responsible for that. I made a frustrated sound and buried my head in my pillow. “I’ll tell you if you cut the empath crap!”

He didn’t say anything, but I started to feel more like myself—

angrier— so I knew he had backed off.

It didn’t seem to matter how much I wanted to move on with

my life; everything kept circling back to Grigori and exiles. I was starting to get a bad feeling that no matter what, I wasn’t going to be able to escape it.

I told Phoenix about the three dead Grigori, that they’d been

murdered by exiles, not just light or dark but both. As I told him about Griffin’s theory, he started to shift uncomfortably in his seat, moving cushions around as if distracted by them.

I lost my patience. “What?”

He sighed. “The rules have changed, Violet. Your people need to open their eyes.” He was shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t be talking about this stuff.”

“Grigori are dead. If you know something, you have to tell me.” Phoenix’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m
sorry
, you’re confusing me with someone who gives a damn. Grigori are the enemy of exiles— of
all
exiles, including me.”

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“Then why have you been helping me? Why did you kill that

exile the other night?”

“I killed him because he was going to rip your head off if

I didn’t.”

“Otherwise what? You guys would have gone out for beers?” I

was getting angrier by the minute.

His eyes flashed dangerously. “No. I’d never go anywhere with

a Cherubim. I told you I don’t like them.” He clenched his jaw, watching me. “I thought you didn’t care anyway. You don’t even

want to protect your own. Why would you think that I would,

when they’d only plan to kill me later…or worse?”

“I never said it was okay for them to be murdered,” I said defensively. I was getting so angry. I wasn’t the only one; Phoenix looked like he could breeze out on me at any second.

“Look, you’re right. I shouldn’t expect you to care,” I said,

between deep, calming breaths. “But you
are
here and you
did
save me from the Cherubim. I know you don’t care about other

Grigori…yet you want me to become one of them. But what would

be the point if the others are all dead? Please, Phoenix.”

“Stop it,” he growled. I knew he was referring to my emotions,

to the fact I could
feel
that I had him.

“Annoying, isn’t it?” I said, flashing him a smart-ass grin.

He put his hands in his pockets and stalked around the living

room for a bit, eventually disappearing down the hall. I let him have time to think. We weren’t arguing over pizza toppings.

When he took up position again on the couch, he slumped

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down, leaned his head back to look at the ceiling, and gave a

weighty sigh.

“Okay. You need to understand there was a time when exiles

were rulers on earth, a time when they were able to come here and take what they wanted and do as they pleased. They took men for slaves and women to bear them children. They didn’t hesitate to kill any who opposed them, and mankind fell under their rule swiftly.”

“They wanted humans to serve them,” I said, remembering what

Griffin had told me.

Phoenix nodded. “I’m sure some of this has been explained to

you. The way some angels came here to kill and conquer, while

others came for the bodies. You see, the realm can sometimes

seem like two opposing countries filled with propaganda and

inevitable war. Unlike here though, it’s not much fun being at

war with no corporeal form.” He gave a wry smile. “It lacks the dramatic rewards.”

Aka blood and guts. I shuddered.

“In those days, Grigori were a rank of angels,” Phoenix continued.

“They were not so much fighters as sentinels who watched over

humanity and reported back to the Seraphim. But they’d been

living on earth for thousands of years and had become weakened

by their human form, susceptible to temptation and desire.”

“Griffin said exiles can suffer the longer they’re human,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

“That’s true, though I’ve told you I’m not like other exiles,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “Anyway, the exiles threw 197

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women and power at the angel Grigori, who were too weak to

resist. They joined forces. Together they were unstoppable. Humans cowered under them, and those who didn’t were relegated to hiding in mountain caves.”

“So what happened?” Clearly we were not living in caves anymore.

Phoenix stood up and started pacing the room. He kept playing

with the buttons on his cuffs, undoing them and doing them up

again. He was wearing a navy shirt that highlighted his hair, and every time he walked under the downlights, it shimmered.

“Eventually, the Seraphim sent a legion of warrior angels— of

both light
and
dark— to earth. For the first time in eons, light and dark had called a truce in order to give earth back to humans. The warrior angels swarmed over the earth like a great flood, destroying everything they touched. They wiped out the tainted humanity,

destroyed exile progeny, and seized the exiled angels and all who had broken angel law. As a final message to any angels who considered making a similar choice, they parted the Red Sea, revealing the pits of damnation, and banished them to an eternity of torment and pain.”