Chapter 19
Gabe
Since Eblis hadn’t known which pirate tribe from Namtar had been discussing the Medana solar system in his club, Gabe visited the leader of the most disreputable. They were known for trading minors from the more primitive planets in the Fornax Galaxy, which was despicable enough. But abducting them from another Galaxy altogether wasn’t something that could be allowed to go unpunished, even if he hadn’t been investigating Evalyne’s disappearance.
He could have teleported directly to the leader’s HQ, but that didn’t serve his purpose. He strode along the back streets, his archangelic radiance all but blinding anyone foolish enough to glance in his direction.
Not that anyone would guess who he was. As a rule, archangels didn’t visit the Fornax Galaxy without invitation, and they sure as hell didn’t trespass on pirate dominated turf.
But his cover as a pissed off, megalomaniac, half-blood demon ensured no one would question him—or report his appearance to those in power.
With a psychic blast, the door exploded, security measures frying. Pirates scattered, and within moments he discovered their leader and flung up a teleportation blockade around him so he couldn’t escape.
“This is outrageous.” The pirate backed up against the wall, terror leaking from him. “We pay our protection dues to the Council.”
Gabe delivered a lethal smile, and the pirate’s knees buckled. “Do I look like a member of the Council?”
“Then what—”
“Intergalactic abductions.”
Fear flared in the pirate’s eyes, and it was enough. Gabe tore through his mind, relentless, searching for information. The pirate collapsed onto the floor, his head jerking like a marionette, but his thoughts were garbled, incoherent.
Underground cults and the search for archangelic blood?
One thing was certain. He wasn’t responsible for Evalyne’s disappearance.
“Speak.” Gabe’s voice was deadly.
“Anzu,” the pirate gasped. “It’s where the cradle of belief thrives. Where the faith that the cursed bloodline survives. That’s all I know.”
Gabe released his psychic grip and stepped back. Anzu was the largest planet in the Seventh System of Fornax, named after the first demon who had claimed the planet for his own.
Looked like he needed to pay the Primus of the Seventh System a visit.
Gabe took a shower as soon as he returned to his villa and scrubbed the stench of the pirates from his body. It was good to be home where Aurora waited for him. She was clean, pure, and would help him forget about the scum he’d just been dealing with.
And then his smile slid into a frown. Home?
It was the second time in as many days that word had fallen so easily into his mind. Until he’d brought Aurora here, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d considered anywhere as being his home.
Lies. He knew.
Because the last time he’d had a home, far from here, Eleni lived there.
* * *
Aurora
Aurora knew the exact moment Gabe returned, even though he didn’t walk in through the front door. His presence brushed through her, an impossibly tangible thing, and she glanced over her shoulder, although she knew he wouldn’t be there.
It didn’t make any difference. He was back.
She stood, stretching her cramped muscles. God, she was starving. She hoped he’d remembered to bring back something to eat. It had been hours since she’d had the fruit.
As she went upstairs, she tried not to dwell on what he’d been doing since she had last seen him. But when she entered his bedroom and heard the shower, her mind went there anyway.
The shower stopped. She straightened her spine and forcibly relaxed her tense muscles. He’d slept with her to clear his system. This was a great wake-up call before she did something completely stupid.
Such as fall for him.
He strolled into the bedroom, a damp, gorgeous god of creation, and the smile he bestowed her way tightened her stomach and sent illicit tingles racing over her skin.
With just a smile. Then again, his smile was a thing of heavenly magnificence.
“You’re back.” Inside, she groaned at her truly terrible remark, but he didn’t appear to mind. Not if the state of his semi-aroused cock was any indication.
Stop looking. She wasn’t looking, but she couldn’t help noticing these things from the corner of her eye, could she?
She wouldn’t fall into his arms the second he returned. That would just make her look sex-deprived and desperate for his attention.
“And I’m starving.” His eyes darkened, and it was obvious he wasn’t talking about food. She dug her nails into her palms to stop herself from wrapping herself around him.
“Good.” Unfortunately, her voice was husky. Focus. “So am I. What did you bring back?”
He blinked glorious long eyelashes that she would die for, and she forgot what she had even asked him.
“Ah.” There was an odd note in his voice, and if he’d been, say, a human, it would have sounded contrite. “Food. I forgot.”
He came closer. Why did he have to smell so delicious? Like an exotic rainforest. Dangerous and forbidden. How long could she hold her breath before passing out?
“I haven’t eaten all day.” He gripped the bedpost, and she was sure he only did it in order to show off his perfectly proportioned biceps. She tore her fascinated gaze from his bronzed muscles. Don’t encourage him. His ego was big enough.
That wasn’t the only big thing about him, either.
“Okay, then. I’m sure we can find something in your kitchen.” She had no idea what she was even saying, but if he came any closer, she was going to have to retreat before she fell at his feet. His big feet.
She swallowed a groan. Her primitive brain always took over when it came to Gabe.
“I’ll go get something.” His smoldering gaze drifted over her, from head to toe and back again, scorching her skin like a lick of flame, before he turned and strolled toward his dressing room.
Her mouth dried. He had a seriously sexy rear. A tiny moan escaped, and she hastily turned it into a cough before Gabe noticed.
He pulled on a pair of black jeans.
He’s going commando. It was insanely erotic.
“Did you discover a loophole?” He turned to face her and slowly tugged his jeans over his far from disinterested erection.
“Your net is as bad as ours. I’d find one thing, only to have it contradicted on the next site.” And she wasn’t just talking about the Guardians. But he didn’t need to know that.
“I never said it was infallible.” He appeared to find it amusing that she might have thought otherwise. “You need to dig deep, just like on Earth’s net.”
He shrugged on a black shirt. Who knew watching a man get dressed could be such an electrifying experience?
“I found one reference that suggested the Guardians hate immortals even more than they do mortals.” She’d discovered that on a site dedicated to paranoid theories, and although there hadn’t been any attempts to back up any of their wild claims, the comment about the Guardians had intrigued her. “Is it true they aren’t allowed to abduct those with the blood of gods in their veins?”
His smile faded. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to discover that? She almost wished she hadn’t, if this was the result.
Stop. It was just a smile. And she needed information. She couldn’t stop researching just in case Gabe didn’t like the answers she found.
“It’s true.” He sounded reluctant, but at least he hadn’t ignored her, or teleported mid-conversation. That was a massive improvement on a couple of days ago.
“And were they around for thousands of years before the ancient gods and goddesses?” It had driven her wild when she’d uncovered that, only to discover every lead she followed ended in a dead end. There were plenty of fanatical theories of who, or what, the Guardians might be, and why they might hate the rest of kno
wn life in the universe. But there was no consensus, and verified facts appeared to be nonexistent.
“Try millions of years.” There was a grim note in his voice. “They should have become extinct long before the Alphas evolved.”
“The Alphas?” He’d mentioned them to her once before, only then he’d called them the Alpha Pantheon. “Who are they?”
He shoved his bare feet into a pair of black trainers, and she knew this discussion was over. “Megalomaniacal pains in the ass. Grab some plates and glasses. I won’t be long.”
And with a smile that gave sin a whole new level of meaning, he teleported.
Back in the kitchen, Aurora laid the table with fine porcelain and crystal ware she’d found in his cabinets. As though this was perfectly natural and she and Gabe were a regular couple, intending to share a takeaway together at home.
Only a seriously deluded woman would think there was anything in the least bit normal about any of this.
She knew all that. But it made no difference. Because a tiny, obstinate, core of her found nothing extraordinary in this fantastical new life.
Even when he reappeared without warning, she didn’t drop the cutlery she was holding. She was getting used to his teleportation. It was almost as though she’d been aware of such things all her life and had just needed … a reminder.
Deep inside, her heart quavered at how unquestionably her brain was accepting it all. If that wasn’t a warning about how easy it was to lose her grip on reality, she didn’t know what was.
Don’t forget my real life.
“I didn’t know what you’d like, so I bought the lot.” He placed a dizzying array of dishes onto the table.
“American Express?” She was joking. Kind of. Did Gabe pay for stuff? Why would an archangel need to pay for things in any case?
Did this food even originate on planet Earth?
“MasterCard,” he said, deadpan. “For the air miles.”
She laughed and pulled off one of the lids. The mouthwatering aroma of exotic spices from the unrecognizable delicacies made her stomach growl.
Not from Earth, then.
“Seriously, though. Do you really have credit cards? Money?”
“Sure.” He strolled to a door that earlier that day she had discovered led to a cellar. She hadn’t investigated further. She’d watched too many slasher movies as a teen to fall for that one. “My investments have the potential to topple governments both here and on a couple of other worlds. It’s not that hard to amass several fortunes when you’re considered immortal.” He disappeared through the door. “You could call it a hobby of mine.”
“That and sex,” she said under her breath. She sat at the table, tugged her chain from beneath her top, and curled her fingers around the familiar pendant.
“I heard that.” His voice echoed from the depths of the cellar, and her face heated. He also, apparently, had supersonic hearing. “If you want a decadent appetizer before the meal, I’m up for that.” He stepped back into the kitchen, holding a couple of dust-covered bottles of wine and wearing a lascivious grin. “We can always reheat the food later.”
Without meaning to, she licked her lips. “Tempting. But I might pass out from lack of food.”
Standing behind her chair, he pulled the cork from one of the bottles, leaned over her shoulder, and poured the wine into her glass.
“Tell me what you think of this.”
The heat from his body enveloped her, and his tantalizing cologne fried any sane thoughts she might have had. She tried not to hyperventilate and hoped like hell he couldn’t hear the way her heart hammered in her chest.
She kept her eyes fixed on her glass. His warm breath sent erotic tremors across her neck, and she struggled not to bury her last remaining sliver of pride and fling her arms around him.
Food was so overrated.
There was a dull thud as he dropped the bottle onto the table. And then he scooped up her pendant and the chain bit into her skin as he yanked it up to take a closer look.
“Ouch.” She squinted up at him, but he was glaring at her necklace as if it personally offended him. “What are you doing?”
“Where did you get this?” The accusation thudded in the air between them, and she swallowed down the hurt that stabbed through her. Did he think she’d stolen it from him?
And then realization crashed through. Did that mean he still had his daughter’s necklace in the villa?
“It was an eighteenth birthday gift from my parents.” Should she tell him? What did she have to lose? “I had it specially commissioned.”
He stared at her, and for an eternal moment she saw raw, bleak longing in his eyes, and the cold abyss of loss dragged icy fingers across her soul.
They’re not butterfly wings.
Chills skated across her arms. Why had she never seen it before? They were archangel wings. The gift from an archangel to his beloved.
Deep in her heart, a small chasm cracked open. How do I know this?
Slowly the chain slid through his fingers. “You had this specially commissioned?”
His voice was even. No one would ever guess the agony behind those words. Not unless they knew.
She clenched her fists on her lap and tensed her muscles against her overpowering instinct to wrap her arms around him. He wouldn’t thank her for it.
“Yes.” She couldn’t help the choked note in her voice.
“Why?” The accusation this time was stark, and another shaft of pain arrowed through her heart. How many centuries had he mourned the loss of his loved ones? How would it feel, to be loved so absolutely by an archangel?
By Gabe?
She recoiled, terror stabbing through her chest. She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to imagine. Because it forced her to face something she’d been trying to ignore from the day she had met him.
How would it feel to love Gabe?
“I …” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat, no longer able to look into those mesmeric eyes. Because now she’d glimpsed the suffering behind the beauty, and it ripped her apart. “Ever since I can remember I used to dream of rainbows and gold dust and”—don’t say archangel wings—“wings. I don’t know why. But the strangest thing of all, is once I started wearing this necklace, the dreams stopped.”
Did they stop? Or do I just no longer remember them?
“You dreamed of this?” His voice was harsh, but she could hear the anguish in his words, and it was killing her. “How could you dream of this, Aurora? This exact design?”
“I don’t know.” How could there be a connection between her dreams and the necklace she’d seen in Gabe’s picture? “Why? What does it mean to you?”
Please don’t brush my question aside. And that’s when she knew she was losing the fight.
I’m falling …
“It’s very similar to an ancient archangelic design.” He sounded as if the words were being torn from his shattered soul, and again she had to smother the need to pull him into her arms. And never let him go. “We’d harness fragments of the rainbows that glinted over our city. Trap particles of the gold that glittered in the air. And bind them into our wings for all eternity.”
It sounded beautiful. She had the absurd desire to weep.
“City?” Her voice was hushed. “You had a city, Gabe?”
Bleak resignation flashed over his face, gone in a second, but it made her heart ache.
“Yes.” He pulled out the chair next to her. “It was the place of our creation, the hell of our incarceration. It no longer exists.”
He picked up the bottle and poured himself a glass before tipping the dark amber liquid down his throat in one long swallow.
It didn’t matter how desperately she wanted to know more about his fabulous city or the mystery of the archangel wings. She knew this precious moment of confidences had passed.
For as long as she could remember, up until her eighteenth birthday, she’d dreamed of magical rainbows, glittering gold dust, and e
thereal wings.
It had been as much a part of her as her telepathic ability.
But she’d inherited that from her mother. Where had the dreams of an ancient archangelic necklace come from?
And why?
Chapter 20
Gabe
Eyes closed, Gabe sucked oxygen into his parched lungs. His forehead rested against Aurora’s, and her orgasmic scream echoed in his mind.
His name.
She’d screamed his name as she had come.
She was soft and warm, and her legs still entrapped him in her silken embrace as they lay on his bed in the early hours of the following morning. A thread of unease drifted through his sated mind. How many times had he taken her? Why did he find her so irresistible, even now, seconds after climax?
He should be craving distance. Feel suffocated by her lingering touch. Hadn’t he tried to convince himself that the only reason he was so obsessed with her was because it had been so long since he’d had a woman?
It was no longer a convincing argument. Had it ever been?
He enjoyed her company. Even before they’d had sex. In the short time they’d been together, he’d got used to having her here.
Used to the way she’d turned his life upside down.
Her eyelashes flickered. She looked enchanting and exhausted and guilt ate through him. But all she had to do was look at him and he wanted her. As though he was trying to create as many memories as possible.
Because their time together was so inevitably brief.
Silence settled around them, an elusive illusion of comfort, as she slipped into sleep. And only then did he realize their fingers were entwined.
Much as he wanted to remain here with her, he had to work. With a heavy sigh, he eased his fingers from hers.
She stirred, frowned, and momentarily tightened her grip on him. “My beloved archangel.”
Redemption: A Realm of Flame and Shadow Novel Page 15