by Lisa Hughey
“Now create your own future,” she advised.
Then she was gone.
Before he could dive back into the pool, Sam and Shasa appeared.
Zach’s ire rose at Sam’s presence, and his audacity to bring Shasa into his private pain. But he forced himself to stay silent.
He’d already hurt her, he knew that. He didn’t want to do it again. Even if it was for her own good.
“Zach.” Sam was using his Archangel voice.
“Don’t use that mumbo jumbo voice on me,” he snarled.
On the edge of his vision, he saw Shasa flinch. He hated that he was hurting her. “Be quick. I need this time to rejuvenate before we attempt to locate Remiel, Zara, and the other Grigori.”
“This won’t take long.”
Shasa still hadn’t said a word. In fact, she appeared to be completely miserable. Zach hated that Sam was inflicting pain on her by forcing the issue.
“Get on with it then,” he said.
Sam turned, ignoring Zach, and spoke to Shasa. “When was your last intimate relationship? And I’m not talking about sex.”
“Bloody fantastic, we’ve got Dr. Drew in the house,” Zach snarked.
Shasa blinked, shrugged and stared at the limestone wall of the Realm pool chamber. “Awhile.”
“And you, Zachariel?”
If he could have shot Sam with laser beams and incinerated him on the spot he would have. “Awhile.”
“The two of you are impossible. I’ll tell you how long.” He paced around the suddenly small room. “Shasa, in your current vessel, never.”
Zach forced himself not to react to that statement. Never? But the need to know was too strong. “Why?” The word burst out of him as if shot from a cannon.
“Do we really need to do this?” Shasa shifted uncomfortably.
Sam let her be. “Zachariel, when was the last time you had sex?”
“You’re really going to go there?” Zach snarled. Hundreds of years, since the day that destroyed not only his existence but wiped out the very life that made his worth living.
“I want you to admit it.” Sam glared at him.
“A long fucking time, Sam,” Zach ground out. “How’s that?”
“Sexual expression is the lifeblood of intimate connection and gives us our humanity and compassion,” Sam argued.
Zach squirmed. He hated this conversation.
“When you have a love that transcends centuries and human vessels, that is the most rare and pure gift in the Universe. Many beings strive just to forge a connection, but what you have….” Sam stopped. Swallowed and bowed his head for a moment.
Both Zach and Shasa were transfixed as they stared at Sam, waiting, waiting for his next words. Zach could no more turn away than he could take his own life.
Sam lifted his head. Stared at them both with intensity as if he could bend them to his will. His unusual blue eyes glowed with an inner light.
“Souls go lifetimes without ever forging that kind of bond.” Sam jabbed at them forcefully. “You cannot turn your back on your connection. It would be a sin of the highest order.”
Neither Zach nor Shasa spoke. His hope was so great that he was afraid to break the silence.
“Work it out, you two.” Sam disappeared.
For hundreds of years he’d denied himself the pleasures of the flesh. Except that wasn’t quite right. He didn’t want pleasure with anyone else but Shasa.
Zach’s heart thudded in his ears. He wanted to believe that Sam was right. That he could have his one true love. But he was terrified that he’d hurt her again.
“So you don’t want me?”
He hated the forlorn quality in her voice. “Of course I want you.” Zach refuted.
Zach was killing her. Every word out of his mouth was another wave pulling her down and drowning her.
“Then why don’t you fight for yourself?” Shasa asked him. “Fight for us.”
“I don’t deserve it.” He turned away.
Shasa was tempted to leave. To leave him to his sorrow. But she couldn’t. “You heard them. Our love is magic.”
“That isn’t us.” Zach denied. Her heart wanted to break, just crack into a million little pieces and crumble to the floor like the dust of a desecrated body.
“That was our past selves.” He flicked a hand. “It’s not who we are now.”
His denial gave her hope. True, they were different. But at their essence they were the same. Before she could make her point, Zach spoke, “But more than that, I want to keep you safe.”
“Don’t you see? Safe isn’t the answer,” she said. “I’ve been safe my whole life. And what has it gotten me? Misery.”
“I can’t hurt you again. It would kill me.”
He meant that, she could see the truth in his tortured brown eyes. Despite her resolve to stay strong, to fight in a calm collected manner, Shasa’s voice broke. “Pushing me away will hurt me.”
He shook his head. As if she couldn’t understand.
“Don’t condemn me to another life of loneliness.” He was about to reject her, and she started talking again. “I’ve been lonely. I want to live. I don’t want to be hidden away, safe anymore.”
“What if I hurt you?”
“Then you’ll make it up to me.”
“I killed you. How can you forgive that?”
“The same way you forgive others. With compassion and understanding.”
“I’m a moody son of a bitch.” But a tentative hope had dawned in his eyes.
Joy bubbled up inside her. “Then I’ll just have to make you laugh.”
Shasa waited, held perfectly still. Waited for him to say something.
Anything.
Shasa could feel his resistance crumbling. And she knew she was on the precipice of getting her heart’s desire. With that knowledge, one thought kept rolling around in her head. He hadn’t had sex for over three hundred years.
Everything coalesced into a clear picture. Sometimes when she was painting she began with only colors, just a few on her palette which she smeared onto the canvas in lovely swaths, with no concrete idea about what the painting was going to look like, no vision for the final art in mind. Just a nebulous idea of colors and feeling.
But this time she knew what she wanted the outcome to be. She wasn’t going to sit back and let life happen. She wasn’t going to hide from her desires and cower in dread of her wants. The picture in her head was happiness.
She wanted Zach.
The Council had given their permission. At this point, the only one standing in their way was Zach himself.
So she sucked it up, put on her big girl panties, and went after her man. “Is it true?” she asked.
“What?”
“You really haven’t….” she trailed off.
Zach was still sitting on the side of the herb-scented pool so she eased down beside him, so close their shoulders touched when she inhaled. “You haven’t had sex since Jamaica?”
He winced. “No.”
“Why not?”
She hoped, prayed that he would actually answer.
“Because,” Zach paused, gazed steadily at her. He reached out his hand, gently curled his fingers around her wrist. She wondered if he could feel the frantic thud of her pulse beneath his fingertips. Then he threaded his fingers with hers, his grip warm and solid against her palm. “No one was you.”
Her heart melted. “Oh,” escaped from her throat. But that was all. Except she wasn’t the same person she’d been in the seventeenth century. “I’m not the same girl.”
“I am aware.” He inhaled, puffed his cheeks when he blew out his breath. “There are remnants of that girl within you. Her soul still exists, but it’s tempered by the trials of your other lives. You are more nuanced, more mature than before.”
The tension that she didn’t even realize she’d been holding flowed from her shoulders.
“I am not the same either.” It was as if he’d reached inside her brain and
read her thoughts. “I am far more cynical, jaded, and hardened but, with you I am a better Archangel.”
By dragging her into his world, he’d pushed her into accepting her full potential.
She had never bared herself to anyone. Ever. She kept her inner life hidden, private, sacrosanct. To share out loud was a novel and slightly terrifying experience. “I felt better than I have in my whole life after pushing back that wall of water,” her voice trembled slightly.
She tightened her grip on his hand, grateful for the contact.
Before she could say more, with his other hand, he brushed his fingertips against the curve of her cheek and cupped her face.
“You were spectacular.” The points of his fingers pressed against her cheek. Every place they touched, electricity sizzled through her body. Her nipples peaked and her heart buzzed.
“You gave me the courage to face my fears.” Shasa took a chance and brushed her lips against his. “Let me help you face yours.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe.
But she could feel his heart boom beneath her fingertips. She traced the outline of his lips with her tongue, licking along the curves the heat of their mingled breaths circled the air around them. Tentatively Shasa dipped her tongue inside his parted lips.
For a moment he didn’t react and she braced for rejection again. Then he pursed his lips and sucked her tongue inside his mouth, stroking her with soft gentle suction.
As if the dam broke, Shasa gripped his shoulders like she’d never let go.
Zach pulled her over his lap so that she straddled him. His erection pushed at the V of her legs as he hugged her tight against him. He wrapped his arms around her body, one hand slid to the base of her neck, the other pressed against the curve of her hips, as if he wanted, needed to get as close to her as possible. Zach slanted his head and took her mouth in an epic kiss. He devoured her, showing her without words how much he desired her. How much he loved her.
And Shasa gave as good as she got.
Zach broke their kiss and rested his forehead against her shoulder. His chest rose and fell as he caught his breath.
Then he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “I love you,” Zach confessed. “Every incarnation of you that graces my life is a gift.”
Her breath stopped in her throat. This was what she wanted. Her hope so tentative that she couldn’t force the words out. Before she could say anything, Zach continued, “But what if I hurt you again?”
“I’d rather live with the possibility of hurt in the future than the pain of living without you now.” Shasa committed. “Be mine, Zachariel. Because I love you too.”
Zach slid into the water of the Realm pool. The one place in the entire Universe where he was happy, at peace.
Shasa was still curled around his body, her ankles hooked behind his back. She threw back her head, spread her arms wide, and splashed into the pool with a joyful laugh. Just as she had long ago.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against the curve of her breast. Zach willed away her clothes with mere thought and twined his body around hers, so they were skin to skin, finally free to love each other. Again. Always.
***
Thank you so much for reading Zach and Shasa’s story! I hope you enjoyed reading Archangel Zach as much as I loved writing this book. If you did enjoy this book, below are a few ways you can help a writer out!!
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Author’s Note
The earthquake that kills Shasa in 1692 in Jamaica actually did occur. And it was as devastating as portrayed in Zach’s story. There has never been any scientific reasoning for why Jamaica had the earthquake and tsunami but over one third of the population perished. A giant chunk of the island literally sank into the sea. Sure sounds like otherworldly magic to me.
Glossary of Terms
Banished Realm: The Fallen Angels are banished here. Trapped by Uri’s power. (Beneath Ley Lines)
Gabriel: The Archangel, Announcer and Herald. His weapon is a diving rod.
Grigori: Angels who are fallen because they lusted after humans and mated with them to produce hybrid half angel/half human beings.
Healer: A human angel with healing powers. Reports to Rafe.
Human angels: Humans with extra powers, typically descended through their mother’s line. They report to different Archangels based on their powers.
Human Realm: Earth.
Jehudiel: The Archangel of Illumination and Wisdom. His weapon is a three-pronged whip.
Latifa: (located between the eyebrows, known as the Khafi, or the Hidden) the spirit is removed from the body from the same point it entered.
Michael: The head Archangel and Leader of the Seven. His weapon is a dagger.
Nephilim: Hybrid half angel/half human beings who brought destruction to the earth. Presumed dead from the Great Flood.
Raphael: The Archangel of Healing. His weapons are his hands.
Remiel: Leader of the Grigori, the Fallen Angels. The eighth Archangel who fell.
Sage: A human Angel with the power to see beneath the surface to true meaning and make connections. Reports to Jed
Samael: The Archangel of Love and Joy. His weapon is the cross bow.
Transition: When a full human makes the transition to Angel after his or her Archangel transfers the power of Vis viva.
Translocation: Act of moving from place to place and between Realms by rearranging body matter through disintegration and materialization.
Un ange avec le pouvoir déviant: A rare angel with deviant powers
Uriel: The Archangel of Birth and Renewal. His weapon is fire.
Vis viva: Angel’s source of power
Zachariel: The Archangel of Forgiveness. His weapon is water.
Zara: One of the Fallen, sister to Remiel.
Lisa Hughey Books
Black Cipher Files Romantic Suspense
The Encounter, A Prequel to Blowback
Blowback
Betrayals
Burned
The Seven
Archangel Rafe (A Novel of The Seven #1)
Archangel Jed (A Novella of The Seven #2)
Archangel Zach (A Novel of The Seven #3)
Snow Creek Christmas
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas – 7 Author anthology
One Silent Night (from Love on Main Street)
Miracle on Main Street (standalone novella)
Family Stone Romantic Suspense
Stone Cold Heart, (Jess, Family Stone #1)
Carved in Stone (Connor, Family Stone #2)
Heart of Stone (Riley, Family Stone #3)
Still the One (Jack, Family Stone #4)
Jar of Hearts (Keisha & Shane, Family Stone #5)
Queen of Hearts (Shelley, Family Stone #6)
Family Stone Box Set (Stone Cold Heart, Carved in Stone, Heart of Stone, Still the One, & Jar of Hearts)
Cold as Stone (John, Family Stone #7)…Coming Soon
About Lisa
USA Today Bestselling Author Lisa Hughey has been writing romance since the fourth grade, which was also about the time she began her love affair with spies. Harriet and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys later gave way to James Bond and Lara Croft and Ja
son Bourne. Exploring the complex nature of a profession that requires subterfuge and lies fascinates her. She loves combining her two passions into fiction. As evidenced by her Black Cipher Files series.
Archangel Rafe was her first foray into the paranormal but after spending time in the Angelic Realm, it won't be her last. At their heart, the Seven novels are about the dynamics of family relationships. But the really hot Archangels don't hurt.
And recently she's been immersed in the Stone Family novellas, stories about a blended family of brothers and a sister who have a lot more in common than they realize. But of course she couldn't just write about family and romance. There are complex plots, bad guys, and suspense too.
Lisa loves to hear from readers and has various places you can connect with her, although, shh, Twitter is her favorite.
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Excerpt from Archangel Rafe
“I’m having night sweats,” Angelina Guerisse announced to her sister, Janine. And the dream that preceded them was the same every time.
Every single freaking time. She really wanted to use the F-bomb, but she was a firm believer in practicing what she preached and she was trying to get her fifteen-year-old son to stop swearing so much.
“Oh Ange, sounds like the change.” Delicately, Janine lifted the swizzle out of the glass, her French manicure acrylics, shiny and perfect in the accent lighting of the hottest new singles spot for the over forty set, and executed one long swipe of her tongue over an olive.