Redemption: A Realm of Flame and Shadow Novel

by Christina Phillips

This. Is. Real. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She had to think logically. Figure out a solution. It was hovering right there, on the edge of her mind.

  And then it unfolded, like a magical answer to all her prayers. “That energy source that protects your island. Haven’t you discovered a way to utilize it to protect individuals, no matter where they are?”

  Please say yes. She held her breath, even though a cynical fragment of her brain mocked her hopes. If he had that technology, he would have shared it with her already.

  His features darkened, like she’d just questioned his integrity, and he rose to his feet in a magnificent flourish. “No.”

  That was it? Just an unadorned no?

  There was no way she could spend the rest of her life isolated on a deserted island.

  With or without Gabe’s electrifying presence.

  She could stop thinking about that right now. No way were they having sex again. It took a couple of lust-clouded seconds to remember what they’d been talking about.

  She stood, with far less grace than Gabe had, wobbled on her stilettos, and took a deep breath for courage. She’d never been religious, but if archangels were real … “Could you please ask God to intercede on my behalf?”

  “Which god did you have in mind?”

  His question echoed in her ears, and the implication wasn’t encouraging. “I’m sorry?”

  His grin was anything but friendly. “You want a consultation with a god. I wouldn’t advise it, but out of interest, which one do you think would lower themselves to assist you?”

  There was only the slightest emphasis on his final word, but it was enough to let her know just how insignificant she was in his terrifying world.

  Not that she’d let him see her wavering courage.

  “Your god.” What other one was she supposed to appeal to? Zeus?

  Wait, maybe there really was a Zeus, after all? How would that be more unbelievable than the fact she’d just shagged an archangel?

  “My goddess barely acknowledges your right to exist.”

  A strange, rushing noise, like she was standing by Niagara Falls, filled her head.

  Goddess.

  She locked down the rising panic. “But this isn’t fair. Don’t I even get a trial?”

  “There’s nothing fair about it.” He sounded feral. “What gave you that idea?”

  A phantom fist tightened around her heart. “But you’re an archangel. You must have some influence. I mean, your goddess is the highest power, isn’t she?”

  His lip curled, and not in a good way. “She’s always liked to think so.”

  In other words, no.

  How had the legends got it all so wrong? Mythology was real, but so different to the fairy stories it was frightening. Before she could think better of it, she grabbed his biceps, and despite her predicament, his rock-hard muscles sent quivers of need through her.

  Seriously? Fuck off, hormones.

  Gabe had saved her once. She knew, if she could just get through to him, he could save her again.

  Somehow.

  “Could you plead my case with her? If she knows my reasons, surely she’ll—”

  “Throw you to the Guardians herself.” He gripped her shoulders, and it shouldn’t have felt so good, not when her entire future hung in the balance. “I haven’t spoken to that bitch in millennia, Aurora. And if I ever see her again, pleading to her nonexistent compassion will be the last thing on my mind.”

  Millennia. Gabe hadn’t seen her in millennia.

  He was thousands of years old. He was an immortal. Superficially, she’d accepted that the moment she’d accepted he was an archangel.

  But she’d never really thought about what it meant. Because he didn’t look ancient. He looked as though he hadn’t yet hit thirty.

  And he clearly didn’t worship his goddess.

  Her eyes stung, and violet streaks flashed in front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, but it didn’t help readjust the warped laws of the universe or clear her vision.

  The violet lightning splintered behind Gabe and then coalesced into a single entity. Long silvery fingers pushed through the fracture, and terror clawed through her heart.

  The Guardians had found her.

  Time froze as the violet shard expanded as if it were a door that had been violently flung open. Horror skated along her arms, and she clutched onto Gabe as a willowy gray alien with a huge dome head and reflective almond eyes stepped through the chasm.

  An alien. The Guardians were gray aliens.

  Gabe swung around and cursed viciously in that strangely familiar language he’d used before. She didn’t even have time to suck in a petrified breath before he wrapped his arms around her and teleported them out of there.

  Aurora reeled as his bedroom came into focus. Relief flooded her. She was safe. He hadn’t left her behind to be taken.

  I never thought he would.

  And then her relief shattered as a single thought scorched her reason.

  Gray aliens were real, and they were more than anyone had ever imagined.

  He relaxed his vice-like grip around her but still held her in his arms. She didn’t have the strength to push him away. She didn’t want to push him away. Garbled fragments of a newly discovered, terrifying reality stabbed through her brain.

  “The Guardians.” The words tangled on her tongue, because they conjured up something magnificent and warrior-like—even if they were the bad guys. “Why didn’t you tell me what they really were?” Renewed panic slammed against her chest. Or was that her heart? “They’re not even human.”

  “I told you they weren’t human.” His voice was harsh, but his fingers were tender as he caressed her back. “I’m not human.”

  Logically, she knew that. But he looked like a man, not a monster, and she had no problem talking with him. Arguing, even. She’d even had sex with him! And he could be reasoned with. There was no way she could imagine doing any of those things with the Guardians.

  Wasn’t that what he’d been trying to tell her all along?

  “You look human.” It was a terrible response and she knew it, but her grasp on what she’d always believed logical and scientific was crumbling around her. Even the knowledge of her own unique heritage faded when compared to the mind-boggling reality that truly existed in this universe.

  “Only superficially.”

  She had no intention of releasing her grip on that illusion of superficiality, either. Gabe she could accept. But deep in a primitive chasm of her psyche, she rejected the existence of the Guardians.

  “Do they have spacecrafts?” Shut up. But the need to understand was stronger than the instinct to run. Even metaphorically.

  “No.” Gabe’s kaleidoscopic gaze bore into her, oddly calming. “They’ve never used that technology to my knowledge. We assume the energy they harvest from the Dark Matter they inhabit provides them with their version of teleportation.”

  Dark Matter was more a case of what science concluded it wasn’t, rather than reliable data of what it was. And it seemed even archangels didn’t know all its secrets.

  “So that violet light is—what, their teleportation device?”

  “Something like that. More like an interstellar elevator. Except when you enter the fracture, you arrive at your destination instantaneously.”

  A shudder inched along her spine. Within the space of a couple of days she’d breached dimensions, hooked up with an archangel, and traveled by teleportation. But the discovery that gray aliens existed was just one thing too much.

  “All the claims of alien abductions—they’re real?”

  He shrugged. “Probably.”

  She was breathing way too fast but couldn’t control it, not even when waves of dizziness collided inside her head. “But they don’t keep the people they abduct. They gave them back.”

  He cradled her face with one hand, and his thumb stroked her heated skin. “They release some of their victims. They don’t just take humans from Earth.” />
  Of course they didn’t. They had an interstellar elevator. They could go anywhere they wanted to.

  “There’s no way they could be persuaded to—” Her mouth was dry, and the words were hard to form. Ignorance might not be a defense in the eyes of the law, but there must be a loophole, somehow. “Give me a full pardon?”

  “For your crime?” His gaze roved over her face, and incredibly her terror ebbed, like the tide receding from the shore. “If they ever get their hands on you, they’d never let you go.”

  His words were terrifying, but the crippling fear became fainter with every beat of her heart. She pressed her hand against his chest, and even through his shirt, the solid heat of his pectorals sent flickers of need over her exposed flesh. Yes, she wanted him. But it was more than raw sexual desire that drained the horror that was so close to drowning her sense of self.

  With Gabe, she was safe. In this unfamiliar world, he was the only one she could trust. It was a primitive imperative, a fundamental survival tactic, but it was so much more than that.

  Her touch was only light, but his pupils expanded, obliterating the mesmerizing magic of his irises. But he was no less compelling for that.

  She wanted to kiss him, hold him tight, never let him go. Wanted his arms around her and feel the brutal strength of his body claiming her once again. But finally, he was answering her questions. And there was so much she craved to learn about this staggering new existence she now inhabited.

  Even if the truth couldn’t set her free. Ignorance was far worse.

  “Are they immortal?” Her whisper drifted between them, the underlying currents of heat far more potent than the words she spoke.

  “I don’t know.” His admission was shocking, and not just because the Archangel Gabriel didn’t know the answer. It was because he’d told her. And it was unaccountably arousing.

  “Are you?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and for an eternal second, unimaginable grief brushed her quivering soul.

  “Define immortal.” He forked his fingers through her hair and cupped the back of her head. “Compared to a human’s lifespan, maybe I am. Compared to those in the Alpha Pantheon, I don’t even come close.”

  Awe shivered through her, but even knowing all this, when she looked at him, she didn’t see a powerful immortal who could teleport at will.

  All she saw was a man who was prepared to disrupt his existence in order to keep her safe.

  Her hand glided from his pecs and curled around his throat. The way he’d held her in anger so recently, yet even then, when murder had glinted in his eyes, she hadn’t been afraid that he’d hurt her.

  His grip had been bruising, but it had been blatantly sexual, and his sharp intake of breath now was all she needed to know that her touch affected him just as profoundly.

  “Can you die?” It didn’t seem possible, but it was all a matter of perspective. After all, to a butterfly a human would appear immortal.

  “I haven’t yet.”

  What a strange response. Didn’t he know if he could die or not?

  With one arm wrapped around her waist and his other hand cradling the back of her head, he walked her backwards to the bed.

  “Really?” she gasped, as with a lightning-fast reaction, he had her flat on her back on the bed. Before she could even follow up her accusation, he straddled her thighs and his wicked grin of triumph at her easy defeat was breathtaking.

  I wasn’t resisting.

  “Really,” he confirmed, and leisurely unbuttoned his shirt.

  Her mouth dried as his spectacular, bronzed chest came into view. All her fleeting fantasies of how he would look naked were pitiful compared to the real thing. How easy it would be to simply worship his masculine magnificence. It was what she wanted, after all.

  She let out a ragged huff of breath. She might liquefy every time he touched her, but that didn’t mean she was a total walkover.

  “What happened to just one—” The word stuck in her throat. How ridiculous was that? Fuck was the perfect description for what they’d shared in that bathroom. She still couldn’t say it. “Time?” she substituted and attempted to glare at him, but he didn’t laugh at her absurd prudery.

  “It wasn’t set in stone.” He threw another evil grin her way before tossing his shirt onto the floor. “This time I want to watch your face as you come.”

  If she had any defenses left, they would have melted like ice before a furnace. Even though being taken from behind had been shocking and exciting, and all but turned her brain to pulp, a tiny sliver of hurt throbbed through her.

  It was as though he hadn’t wanted to see her face. As though it didn’t matter who she was, just so long as she was willing.

  He was an archangel. This wasn’t the start of a new relationship. He didn’t want her to be abducted by the Guardians, but that didn’t mean he felt anything more than lust for her.

  That’s all I feel for him.

  She still couldn’t keep her mouth shut, though. “Is that all you ever think about? Sex?”

  “When I’m with you?” He unclipped the suspenders and rolled the top of her stocking along her thigh, without breaking eye-contact. “Yes.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows and watched, fascinated, as he discarded her stilettos before continuing to roll one stocking, and then the other, down her legs before he dropped them beside him on the bed.

  “I’m going to burn every last piece of that outfit,” he said as he stood over her on the bed and tugged his pants down his legs. “But we might as well enjoy it in the meantime.”

  She was enjoying herself already. His body was a sculpted work of art, all rippling muscles, sleek flesh, and a dusting of dark blond hair that arrowed into his black boxer briefs. Her gaze snagged on his massive bulge, and she had the terrible certainty she was going to drool.

  With expert ease, he toed off his boots and discarded his pants. All without losing his balance and crashing on top of her.

  “I suppose you’ve had plenty of practice.” Please don’t let me have said that out loud. The quizzical look on his face crushed that hope. No way was she going to tell him what she really meant. He might be her savior, but his ego was big enough. She scrabbled for coherent words that would make sense of her random comment and came up blank. “Secluded island. No interruptions.” Shut. Up. Her mouth just kept on going. “I can’t even imagine how many women you’ve tied up in this bed.”

  Did I just say tied up? Where had that come from? Even her Viking fantasies didn’t go that far.

  Just because he hadn’t wobbled while contorting his body was no need for her to devolve into a gibbering wreck. Gymnasts also possessed perfect balance. Why couldn’t she just bite her tongue when nerves got the better of her?

  Instead of bestowing one of his toe-curling, evil grins her way, a fleeting shadow darkened his face.

  “No.” Reluctance dripped from the word, as though he answered her against his will. “I’ve never brought a woman here before.”

  His confession curled like warm honey through her veins. It shouldn’t matter whether she was the only one he’d brought to his island, and yet it did.

  Don’t fall for an archangel’s silver tongue. Except he wasn’t trying to flatter her. It was the stark truth.

  Deep in her heart she knew it, even if she had no idea how she could be so sure.

  “Gabe,” she whispered, although she had no idea what she was going to say.

  He fell to his knees, one of the stockings in his hand, and this time his smile was all sin. “You talk too much.”

  Once again, he straddled her hips, his subtle, exotic cologne making her head spin, and his expanse of naked chest was close enough to lick.

  Before she got the chance to follow that delicious thought through, he eased her onto her back. Without taking his mesmeric gaze from her, he tied the stocking around her wrist.

  Wait. What?

  She tugged ineffectually against the knot as he
fixed the other end to his bedpost.

  “Excuse me?” Her accusation was all breathy, more like an enticement to continue.

  “Why, what else have you done?” Without waiting for her answer, he restrained her other wrist before rolling back on his knees and admiring his handiwork with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “This leather shit has to go.”

  She was all for that. Not that she’d mind wearing it if Gabe had given it to her, but right now, naked was all she wanted to be.

  He held out his hand, and a million glittering atoms appeared, dancing in the air above his fingers. She couldn’t blink, couldn’t breathe, as within nanoseconds they coalesced, and a wicked looking dagger glinted in his hand.

  Chapter 14

  Aurora

  “Don’t wriggle,” he warned, and she didn’t even feel the chill of the blade touch her skin as it sliced through the leather as though it was silk.

  He peeled the severed leather over her breasts, exposing her fully to his gaze. But still he looked into her eyes, and although she was tethered to his bed, and was pinned beneath his powerful body, it was the beauty of his irises that truly held her captive.

  “Your silence suggests you’re impressed by the skill of my magnificent dagger.” His teasing voice was smoky, but it was his smile that was the true aphrodisiac.

  “You dagger is a pretty impressive trick.”

  “That’s harsh.” He spun the thing around on the tip of his finger, its deadly blade gleaming. “I don’t do tricks.”

  She laughed, couldn’t help it. “All right. It’s magnificent.”

  He tossed the dagger into the air before catching it by its worn hilt and shifted his weight so his erection brushed against the tender folds of her sex. She moaned, bit her lip, but couldn’t stop moving restlessly against his rigid length.

  The tip of his nose brushed hers. It was a featherlight touch, unexpectedly tender, and the pit of her stomach knotted with an absurd pleasure that bordered on pain.

  “How gratifying to know my weapon meets with your approval.”

  His breath against her mouth was an erotic caress. She wanted to spear her fingers through his hair, wind her arms around his shoulders, and drag him onto her needy body. But, inexplicably, he maintained a whisper of distance between his chest and her aching breasts. And there was nothing she could do about it, because he had tied her up.