Fallen Angel (Hqn) (18 page)

Did he see her scars as something she had earned, as she did herself? As she saw his? She wondered again about the scar on his jaw. She’d meant to ask him about it, but the subject always turned just as she was getting ready.

She reached out, traced the mottled line of flesh with her fingertip. His eyes opened. He smiled.

“Hey.” His voice was rusty with sleep.

“Hi.”

His smile was so beautiful. So open. As though he wasn’t awake enough yet to worry, as he so often did. Or maybe last night had left him feeling the same way it had her. Changed. Better.

She remembered her dream talk with Asmodeus. So much was different now. She didn’t know if she’d see him again, and somehow, surprisingly, it didn’t matter as much as she would have imagined, the idea of giving him up. Although some small part of her was sad, still doubtful as to whether or not she would end up calling him eventually. Perhaps out of habit, if nothing else. But she understood she no longer
needed
him. All she needed was right here, in her waking world.

Declan.

He pulled her to him, kissed her mouth, her cheeks. She closed her eyes and sighed her pleasure, her body heating. Slipping her leg over his hard thigh, she felt his cock go rigid against her leg. Needed him inside of her again.

“Declan, have me.”

“You’ll be too sore,” he murmured against her throat, his lips leaving tiny, hot kisses all over her skin.

But his arms tightened around her, his chest a solid wall of muscle beneath her breasts. And before she had a chance to protest that she was fine, he’d flipped her over onto her back.

His shoulders were broad, rippling with muscle. She could hardly believe that he was this close, finally, that she could smooth her palms over his skin. His hair was a mess of unruly curls, falling into his eyes. They were that dark, rich blue in the early light. Brilliant. Dazzling. And his hands on her were burning hot, making her body yearn for him, making her sex go wet.

He reached down between them, his fingers teasing at her damp opening. She spread for him, opening her body up.

“Jesus, you feel like silk.”

He plunged two fingers inside her, and she arched to meet him. But he slipped them out, leaving her empty.

“Are you sore, sweetheart?”

“A little. But it doesn’t matter. I will heal. You heal me, Declan.”

He pressed against her clitoris, his fingers rubbing in lazy circles. Desire skittered over her skin, arrowed deep into her body. She moaned. And when he bent his head to take one stiff nipple into his mouth, she went rigid with a pure, steaming pleasure.

“Oh, yes…”

His tongue swept over that hardened tip. Her breasts ached, her sex swelling. She spread her thighs farther apart.

“I need you now, Declan,” she murmured. “I need you inside me, please.”

“Ah, since you ask so politely.”

His voice was low, husky. He seemed enormously pleased as he reached into the night table and pulled out another condom. He began to tear the packet, but she put her hand out to stop him.

“Wait.”

“What? Angel?”

“I want to see you in the light. For the first time. May I?”

He smiled, the smile spreading into a grin, and he pushed himself up, settling back on his heels. She sat up, holding on to his muscular thighs. They were covered in fine, dark hair, soft beneath her palms. But it was his cock that fascinated her.

The skin was smooth and velvety; she knew the touch of it from the night before. In her hands. In her mouth. She leaned in, her gaze roving the texture of the skin, watching it swell. She reached out with one fingertip, touched it gently. He moaned, and she looked up to find him still smiling at her. His face was soft and loose with desire. She bent to her task once more.

Experimentally, she ran her fingers up the underside, tracing the barely visible veins beneath the skin. He shivered. She did it again, smiling to herself.

The harder he grew, the more beautiful it was to her, that hardening flesh, swelling with need, with the pleasure of her touch. She felt…powerful, in a way she never had before. This strange sense of absolute vindication of what she was able to do to him.
For
him. Of her femininity. It felt suddenly like more than merely her purpose. She was beginning to understand the value of their exchange of pleasure. Of touch and taste and presence.

She wrapped her fingers around the base of his cock, as she had seen Asmodeus do so many times, and began to stroke. Declan groaned, and she glanced up to see his eyes closing as he wrapped his hands in her hair.

“Ah, God, Angel…”

She stroked harder, faster, her own body filling with a tight, coiled heat, as though she were the one being stroked.

His breath came in short, sharp pants, and his hips were moving, just a small undulating arch and retreat. She loved the sight of the muscles working in his thighs, the earthy scent of man and desire. Loved his quiet moans, the feel of his hand tightening in her hair, the other slipping down to hold her cheek.

When she looked up he was watching her, his eyes a gleam of blue from beneath his lowered lids, the lashes incredibly long and dark and heavy.

She wrapped her fingers tighter and squeezed. He pulled in a short, gasping breath, his face absolutely torn with desire, making her sex throb in response. Rising up on her knees, she bent her head to sweep her tongue over his belly, tasting the salt of his skin.

He growled, his cock jumping in her hand.

“Jesus, Angel, you’ll make me come. It’s too good,” he panted.

She bent lower, flicked her tongue at the juncture of hip and thigh.

“You torture me,” he moaned.

She laughed, did it again, and again he flinched, pulled in a tight, gasping breath.

“Angel. Sweetheart. This will all be over in about two seconds.”

“No, too soon, Declan.”

She sat back and pulled his hands to her breasts. “I need you to touch me. To be inside me. I want you to show me what you enjoy. What you like about my body.”

“Everything. I want to do everything with you. And your body is so damn beautiful, so perfect, I can barely stand to look at you every day. I can barely stand that you’re right here, and I haven’t been able to touch you. Haven’t let myself.”

His fingertips stroked the curve of her breasts, tracing the fullness before going to the nipples, caressing lightly. “I love your breasts. Love the feel of the flesh here. The pink of your nipples. Watching them go darker when I press them between my fingers.”

He did so, a small, aching pinch that was lovely, sending sensation straight to her sex.

“Ah…”

“I love the smooth skin of your stomach. How
female
it is.” He brushed his hands over her belly, pressing gently with his palms, then sliding them around behind her. “And I love the flawless curve of your ass. I love the way it feels cradled in my hands. I love the way it looks. The way you’re put together. God, the way you felt inside…”

“Do you want to have me now, Declan?” she asked, nearly breathless with his words, with what he was saying, what he was doing to her body.

He exhaled slowly. “I want whatever you want. Whatever you need.”

“I want you. Always. In whatever way pleases you. That is what makes me happy. That is what brings me satisfaction.”

She lifted his hand, kissed his palm over and over. He watched her, his lips parted, a look of pure pleasure on his face—pleasure, and the same raging desire she felt.

Without another word she turned around, until she was on her hands and knees, her thighs spread to welcome him. When she felt the heat of his body as he leaned over her she felt a new wave of desire. And something else…

Yes, to be taken over by him in this way. To surrender every part of herself.

His hand between her thighs once more, sliding in the seam of her sex, making her shiver.

“You’re so damn wet,” he murmured. “Are you ready, Angel?”

“Yes, please.”

He shifted to reach for the condom packet he’d left on the nightstand. She waited, her breathing ragged with need, while he sheathed himself. He spread her thighs wide with his knees, and already pleasure was like a storm, hammering through her instantly, her sex clenching.

“Please,” she told him. “You won’t hurt me, Declan. I swear it.”

He slipped inside her with a low groan, just the tip, one arm winding around her waist and holding her tight. He slid a little deeper.

Desire shivered over her skin, up her spine. She leaned back against him, loving the tight muscles of his thighs behind hers, his abs and chest pressed against her back. The hardness surging inside her.

“Declan, you don’t need to be tentative with me, I promise. My body is ready. I need you deep inside me. I need to feel you.”

He kissed her back, between her shoulder blades, left a trail of small, fluttering kisses down her spine. His other arm looped around her waist, his hand slipping between her thighs, pressing onto her tight clitoris.

“Ah…”

“Okay, sweetheart?”

“Yes. Wonderful. Come on, Declan. Please.”

He moved deeper, and she loved the stretch of her body, the hard, driving wave of pleasure coming from his fingers on that erect nub of flesh, his cock moving slowly into her. Sensation was like a thundercloud, a heavy wave rolling through her. And as he inched deeper, pleasure drove deeper into her body—she swore she could feel it in her womb.

“Declan, I need to come!”

“Yes, sweetheart. Angel. Come, baby.”

His hips pistoned, a steady and gentle in and out, and he rolled her tight clitoris between his fingertips. Her back arched as the first wave hit, coming from everywhere at once: his hand, his cock, his hard body against hers, holding her down, taking her over.

She cried out, her sex clenching. She arched into his fingers, back into his thrusting cock. Her climax went through her like a storm. Powerful. Raging.

“Declan…ah!”

She was still shivering with it when he tensed, his body going rigid all over.

“Angel…baby. My baby…”

He ground into her, a little too roughly, perhaps. But she didn’t care. All she knew was his pleasure, and her own. It was all one thing. Almost as if they were one sensation. One person.

“His baby,” he had called her.
His.

Yes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
OMEHOW
THEY
HAD
MANAGED
to stay in bed nearly all day. It was afternoon; he could tell from the way the sun shone through the window, lighting up the room, making his eyes ache.

They’d napped, made love again, napped some more. He’d only gotten up to feed Liam, to let him outside. He hadn’t had such a lazy day in…maybe never. He didn’t usually allow himself this kind of indulgence. And the truth was, there hadn’t been anyone in his life he’d wanted to spend an entire day in bed with. Ever. Not even Abby. He’d been too young, too much in grief over his mother, he now realized, to really know what it was he’d wanted with her. And then it had been too late to think about it.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel. Hadn’t allowed himself to even consider it. Until Angel.

He watched her now as she stretched in her sleep, the sheet pulling away from her breasts. Jesus, they were spectacular. Perfect.

She was perfect. Strange, that it was her that had gotten to him. Right under his skin. But she was a strange woman. Unusual. Different.

Maybe that was what got him. Maybe that was what he’d needed to open up. She
had
opened him up; he had to admit that. In so many ways.

She made him think about things. Everything. His willingness—or lack of it—to connect with a woman. With anyone. His relationship with his father. The way he’d hung on too long to his past, like a goddamn bulldog with a bone. If she could move beyond the things she’d lived through—and he was damn certain it was a hell of a lot worse than anything he’d been through—then he should be able to do the same. Shouldn’t he? He couldn’t forget—didn’t want to forget—but maybe he could find a way to move on and leave at least some of the bullshit behind. The pain.

Abby…

Still hard to think about her, but Angel made it easier, somehow.

Something went off in his head, a brilliant flash that left him stunned.

Angel.

She
redeemed
him. Made him all right. And more than that, he loved her.

Loved her.

It was like an epiphany to him. Startling and sharp and clear.

He felt his limbs go loose and warm. And looking at her beautiful, serene face, his chest tightened.

He would never let any harm come to this woman. Never.

He ran his fingertips through her long hair. Incredible, how soft it was, how pale and fine, like her skin. He ran his palm over her shoulder, her neck, her cheek. And felt something warm and eager and frightening stir in him.

She woke, smiling, as always.

“Declan.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you. No. That’s a lie.” He laughed, his head still reeling from what he’d just realized. “I did mean to. I wanted to see you. To talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” He laughed again, feeling lighter than he had in too many years. He didn’t trust it yet. But he had to recognize that it was there. “I must sound crazy.”

Her smile widened, her teeth a flash of white between her lush, pink lips. “It’s not crazy to want something without quite knowing what it is. At least, I don’t think so.”

“I want you, Angel,” he told her. “I don’t mean just sex. I want to know you. Everything about you.” His heart was racing. “I don’t care if it’s not all pretty. It doesn’t have to be. God knows my life hasn’t always been pretty. But I want to tell you about it. Everything. I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

She raised a hand, touched the scar on his jaw. “Tell me about this, then.”

“I was seven, I think. I fell off my bike and I went face-first into a fence post in our front yard. One of my bottom teeth cracked and came out. I remember seeing it on the ground, how white it was. Shining. My dad came and picked me up.” His hand closed over hers, feeling the ridged skin on his jaw with his fingertips. “I thought he’d be pissed, but he was just…worried. I guess I scared him.”

“He loved you.”

He turned to her, saw the light in her eyes, that lovely brilliance that was
her.

“Yeah.”

“He still does, Declan,” Angel said.

He was silent for several moments.

He felt himself starting to shut down. He didn’t want to do it. “I guess he does,” he allowed.

“I can see it. There is love in his eyes when he looks at you.” He began to shake his head, but her hand tightened on his jaw. “I may not know much about the world, but this I know,” she insisted.

Why did it make him angry to think about his father loving him? To know what she said was probably true? Who was it he was mad at, anyway? His father? Himself?

“I have some…complicated feelings about my father.”

“I think maybe it’s always complicated, loving someone. But is that enough reason to turn away from love? Tell me it isn’t, Declan.”

There was something in her eyes, shining. Hope, maybe. He wasn’t sure what she was asking, exactly.

“Look, I know I have to make some repairs to my relationship with my dad eventually. But you don’t know everything that’s happened between us, Angel.”

“I would like to see that happen. For the two of you to be close. I feel as though you’re missing out on something important. Don’t you feel that, Declan? As if enough years have passed. Been lost. Too many.”

“I don’t even know where to start. With him. With myself.”

“You’ll find the way. I know you will. He wants it, too. To be close to you. To be your father. All you have to do is allow him to.”

“Maybe. Or maybe too much time has passed. Maybe too many bitter things have been said. I don’t know.”

She sat up, looking squarely at him. There were tears pooling in her eyes. He couldn’t stand to see it. But he knew he wasn’t going to like what came out of her mouth.

“Declan, I don’t understand you! I’m trying so hard. You have a
father.
You have love, just waiting for you to reach out and grasp it.”

He ran a hand over his hair, frustration welling up in him like some toxin poisoning the moment.

“I don’t expect you to get this.”

“Why? Because I’ve never experienced a complicated relationship?” Her summer-blue eyes were blazing now. “Do you think my relationship with The Grandmother was without conflict, Declan? That even now my feelings for her are not complicated?”

“The woman is crazy!” he burst out. “Dangerous.”

Angel’s small fist pounded the bed beside her. “I know that! It doesn’t make things any easier—not in my heart, where it all happens. But, Declan…” She shook her head, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. “You have so much more…possibility with your father. So much more love. And you are being so stubborn.”

A smile threatened at one corner of his mouth. “You’re right. I’m stubborn as hell.”

She said quietly, “It does not always serve you well.”

“You’re right about that, too.” He sighed. “I have to think about it. Maybe talk to my dad.”

Not specifically about all the years he’d kept him at a distance, his old feelings of rage. But just talk.

“That’s all I’m asking. To open the way.”

His shoulders relaxed. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding them.

“Come here.”

He pulled her into his arms and she went willingly, melting against him. They stayed that way for a while, both of them calming down.

Angel was changing him, making things shift around inside his head. And it was all good, if a little scary. He could admit to being scared.

She was looking up at him, watching him, her face serene now. Certain. And he felt again a startling wave of love for her.

He wished he could feel some of her serenity. Her acceptance. He wasn’t sure he even knew how to love, and until he was, he’d better keep it to himself. He couldn’t burden her with his feelings. Not now, when she was still just beginning to find her way in the world.

“Angel, remember when we talked about selling your drawings? We should do it. We should go into Mendocino and talk to some people at the galleries, show them your work. Would you like that?”

“I think…it would make me feel more independent, if I were to earn my way. More useful. Stronger.”

“That’s what I was thinking. We can go tomorrow.”

“I would like that. And, Declan, we should take some of your carvings, too.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Those are just my own thing. I don’t feel a need to sell them.”

“It’s private,” she said.

“Yeah. It sort of is.”

But she made him realize that he had to find his way in the world, too. Maybe every bit as much as she did. He knew television and the internet, and all those things that were brand-new to her. But she knew a hell of a lot more about how people’s minds worked, somehow. Their hearts. That’s where he was fucking defective. She’d gotten him to open up, to love her, but he still had one hell of a mess in his head.

No, he’d keep it to himself until the right time. And if that time never came, well, maybe he’d get over this. Maybe it wasn’t really love at all, but some kind of obsession. What did he know about love, anyway?

All he knew right now was that she made his heart hammer in his chest. And it was a good kind of ache that made no sense to him at all. She made him want to put his arms around her and hold on.

Forever.

He
knew
he loved her, goddamn it. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

* * *

A
NGEL
HAD
BEEN
COMING
TO
talk to Ruth for three months, a little more, perhaps. And she still hadn’t talked to her of Asmodeus. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because she thought if she did, it would make him less real. Or make her see whether or not he truly was. She hadn’t been ready for that. But today was a new day.

She shifted on Ruth’s comfortable sofa, rolling the edge of her blue denim sundress between her fingers. Outside the window of Ruth’s office the fog rolled by in gray tufts. It was cold today, and she’d had to put a sweater on. But mostly she felt cold inside. She had for the past three days, ever since she’d talked to Declan about his father. About having to let go. She’d understood instantly what that meant for her, as well. And that cold had battled with the lovely, seeping warmth of what was growing between her and Declan.

The past few days with him had been amazing. She’d spent every night in his bed. They’d explored each other in ways even Asmodeus hadn’t known of. He couldn’t possibly know the touch of human flesh against flesh. The gentle heat that was the human body. The moistness of a tongue, the softness of lips on lips.

Declan went to work each day, and she spent her time reading, walking with Liam, cooking meals. Her body was healing from its wounds. Her heart was healing even more under Declan’s care. His affection. His touch. But despite the physical warmth of him, the warmth he brought to her heart, that one part of her was still cold, deep inside. The part that understood it was time to let go of Asmodeus.

“Angel?” Ruth’s voice pulled her back into the room. “You seem distracted today.”

“I’m sorry. I suppose I am distracted.”

“There’s something you want to tell me,” Ruth said. It was a statement, not a question. She wasn’t surprised. Ruth often knew things before Angel spoke. That was her way.

“I have something important to tell you, Ruth.” Why was it so difficult to speak? To make her voice come out in anything above a harsh whisper?

Ruth waited, her face calm. She would wait out their entire hour together, until Angel was ready to talk. That was her way, too.

She pulled her gaze from the window to look at Ruth, took a breath, and began. “I’ve told you about The Grandmother. About how she raised me. The drugs to dream. The rituals. The compound. I’ve told you about my purpose as The Gift.”

“Yes. But there’s more?”

Angel nodded, her stomach a tight knot. “I’ve left something out. Something important.”

“Okay.”

Ruth waited some more. Angel tried to get her thoughts in order. What did she need to tell? She knew enough now about this world to understand how strange Asmodeus would seem to most people, even though he was as familiar to her as her own skin. Even to Ruth, who accepted everything without judgment.

“I told you I was trained in the art of love. How to please a male. That I was untouched by man. But I didn’t tell you
how
I was trained. Or by whom. This has been my one secret from you. And I’m not sure I even understand why I’ve kept it to myself.”

“Everyone is allowed to have their secrets, Angel. You tell me things as they occur to you, or as you’re ready to talk about them.”

“I’m ready now.” She paused, bit her lip as her pulse kicked up a notch. “I think I am.”

Ruth nodded, waited.

“His name is…Asmodeus.” A hard rush of heat that wasn’t entirely pleasant ran up her spine as she said the words aloud. “I don’t know why it’s hard to say his name here. To say it to another person aside from The Grandmother.” She paused, took a long breath before continuing. “When I call to him I am always in the dream place. The place that was shown to me with the dreaming herbs. I came to know it, and can reach it whenever I sleep. I can go there when I want to. To see him. It’s
his
place. But he doesn’t belong here, on this plane. And so talking about him feels…wrong.”

She stopped, unsure of where to go next. Her head was aching.

“The name is familiar to me. I know ‘Asmodeus’ as the prince of carnality in the Christian hierarchy of demons. Is this who you’re telling me about?”

“Yes.”

“And he comes to you in your sleep?”

She nodded. “He has been the one to train me since I was twelve years old. He’s been my only friend, if you can call him that. He was my teacher. My companion. He showed me so many things. Talked with me. But now…now I’m doubting my need for him any longer. I am doubting his very existence. And I’m afraid of what that makes me. That I am…insane, perhaps, to think he’s real.”

Ruth leaned forward in her chair and patted Angel’s hand. Her touch was warm. Reassuring. “I don’t believe you’re insane, Angel. I think you’ve been given certain information, your brain more easily programmed by the drugs and the rituals and what you’ve been told by The Grandmother, the only person you had in your environment. That can be a very powerful thing for a child. What else could you have possibly known?”