When she had taken him into her apartment and iced his knuckles, she had put his body to memory, including the beautiful tattoo of angel wings he had on his back. She hadn’t figured him as a tattoo type so the swirling blue-grey elaborate wings that decorated his shoulder blades had surprised her. She had wanted to ask him about them but hadn’t been able to find her voice at the time, and asking him about them now certainly wouldn’t help her cause, not when she wanted to ask him why such an elementally masculine man had such beautifully delicate tattoos. They seemed like a strange choice.
Unless he was gay.
Was that a possibility?
Amelia’s gaze darted to his face and her eyes widened when she caught him staring at her chest. He quickly looked away, turning his right cheek to her and taking in the people walking along the street, lending her a view of his noble profile. Bi? He was gorgeous, clearly looked after himself, and also kept to himself. Was that a bad sign? Amelia frowned at her thoughts. She was overanalysing things. Just because he was good looking and not interested in her didn’t mean he was gay or involved in a relationship, or any of those things that she wanted him to be so she would feel better about his rejection.
He just didn’t find her attractive.
He had said it straight. Stay away.
Maybe she would do just that.
Amelia went to pick up her black leather handbag and then hesitated. Flushed with bravery and unwilling to give up so easily, she fixed Marcus with a hard look and was surprised when he turned his head and looked at her, as though he had felt her staring.
“Is something wrong?” Not a trace of a tremble in her voice. Her heart pounded, adrenaline thundering in her veins, but she held her ground. It was a horribly personal question to ask him but she had to find out whether his reaction to her touch was because he didn’t want her or because he did but felt he wasn’t good for her, as he had said.
Marcus stared at her for almost a full minute, the fading evening light reflecting off the windows and his white shirt, illuminating his face and chasing the shadows away. The edge of darkness his expression had gained lifted to reveal something that wasn’t quite warmth, but wasn’t icy cold either.
“Why?” A slight frown pinched his black eyebrows together.
“You… it’s just you seem more out of spirits than normal.”
He gave her an odd look. It was the truth. He never seemed very happy and now she couldn’t help wondering why. His warning to keep away from him had brought back all the previous times she had seen him and the distance he maintained between him and everyone in their building, and now she wanted to know whether the man sitting opposite her was more similar to her than she had thought possible.
Did he go from one bad experience to the next too?
He had to have a reason for wanting to keep his distance from everyone and not letting anyone in. Was he afraid of being hurt or feeling something for someone? She feared that too, entered into relationships believing that eventually they would end and she would be hurt, but as much as she tried to live alone and be the independent woman she wanted to be, she couldn’t help feeling lonely and wanting to share her life with someone.
For a brief moment, Marcus had seemed like someone she could do that with, and this time she had felt it wouldn’t end in tears.
He could have been her Mr Right, but such a man wouldn’t have told her to keep away from him. That hadn’t been in her dream of what would happen today when she bumped into him. She hadn’t anticipated that response at all. She couldn’t blame him though. Chatty old Mrs McCartney next door had probably told him all about her poor choice in men and he was telling her to keep away because he didn’t want to get sucked into her miserable life.
Amelia jumped when her mobile phone rang, the jaunty tune breaking the heavy silence as it buzzed on the table. Marcus frowned, his blue eyes darting to it. She wanted to ignore it, knowing that it would be Mike calling to chew her ear off about last night and make her feel wretched for the rest of the weekend, but the ring was so loud that people around her were staring.
Instead of answering, she picked it up, put her handbag on the table, and dumped the phone into it, muffling the annoying ringtone.
“Why didn’t you answer it?” Marcus stared at her bag. Amelia tapped the table, cringing inside and wishing the phone would stop ringing.
“It’s my ex.” Ignoring him was preferable to speaking with him.
Marcus surprised her by reaching across the table, fishing the phone out of her handbag, and flicking it open. Amelia could only stare as he brought the phone to his ear, his face set in grim dark lines, and glared at the table as though he wanted to kill it.
“I thought I told you to leave Amelia alone?” He paused, his expression darkening further and the muscle in his jaw tensing. Amelia’s heart pounded hard and she wished she could hear what Mike was saying to Marcus, because he looked close to going ahead and breaking something. Anger radiated from him in strong waves and everyone stared as he barked into the phone, “Stay away from her because the next time you dare to go near her, I’m not going to be so kind as to let you walk away.”
Amelia’s hands shook, her limbs trembling with them, and she joined everyone in staring at Marcus as he clicked the phone shut and dropped it back into her purse. What had just happened?
He had defended her again when she had been convinced that he wanted nothing to do with her.
His eyes met hers across the table and the trace of compassion in them only confused her further. He blinked slowly, dark lashes shuttering his pale blue irises, stealing them from view before lifting again to reveal the full extent of their beauty. Warmth shone in them, a softness that reached out and curled around her, filling her with a sense of safety even as her whole body quaked with the fear that Mike wouldn’t heed Marcus’s warning and would come after her again.
“I won’t let him near you, Amelia. You don’t have to worry about him. I will keep you safe.” Those words, so softly spoken in his deep voice, weren’t a lie. There was truth in his eyes and his open expression, and she believed him.
She just wasn’t sure what to make of him.
What sort of man told a woman to stay away from him and then promised to keep her safe?
Marcus was an enigma and something inside her was telling her to take his advice and keep away from him, because if he turned out to be another black knight and broke her heart, she didn’t think she would recover from it.
She gathered her things, rose from her seat and hesitated only long enough to catch the confusion surfacing in his eyes before making a swift exit.
CHAPTER 5
There was no doubt about it.
Marcus had put his foot in it.
Everything had been going well yesterday until Amelia had taken hold of his hand and he had quickly withdrawn his, and rather than making an excuse as planned, he had warned her away.
Instinct had pushed those words from his lips.
He had no desire to get any closer to her than was necessary.
Marcus raked his fingers through his overlong black hair, combing it away from his forehead, and stared into the distance across the rooftops of London.
Who was he fooling?
Not himself, that was certain.
The spark of desire her touch had reignited in him, bringing his hunger to caress her in return back to boiling point, and the warmth that travelled through his flesh, spreading outwards from the point where her fingers rested against his skin was unmistakably a sign of him harbouring an attraction towards her.
He paced the black tarred roof of his apartment building, scouring the horizon for an answer to his troubles. The problem of gaining Amelia’s trust had been all but solved until he had foolishly told her to keep away from him.
He had always been aware that his instinct to protect her ran deep in his veins but had never suspected that it had corrupted his heart too and that he would even deem it necessary to protect her from himself. She
’d had her share of pain and suffering, more than such a pure kind soul deserved, and he couldn’t bring himself to add to it. When his mission was over, he was leaving Earth and Amelia behind him for good. If he used her desire against her, her heart would break when that happened. She would never understand. She would blame herself, just as she did whenever one of the vile men she involved herself with decided to leave her or did something that forced her to leave them.
He couldn’t be like them.
Amelia deserved better.
Far better than him, that was for sure.
One day, she would meet the man who would become her world and who would treat her right and make her happy.
A flash of her smiling at him yesterday cut into his thoughts and deep into his chest.
He had made her smile.
Truly smile with happiness and warmth.
And then she had looked wounded, leaving him at the café alone to ponder what had possessed him to say such things to her and why he had decided to once again intervene in her destructive relationship with her ex-lover.
Duty.
In part it was a lie to say he did these things out of his sense of duty, but it was also his shield and he would not cast it aside.
The dying rays of the sun warmed his skin, the lingering heat of the day cocooning him in a soft breeze that stirred his soul as he watched the sun set over London. It was growing late. Time had passed quickly while he had been lost in his thoughts, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the mortal realm far below him, and he still hadn’t found the answers to the questions that plagued him. Questions about his mission had been joined by ones about Amelia and her feelings for him.
Why would a beautiful mortal female look upon him with such desire?
Marcus looked down at his hands and turned them palm up. These hands had killed many in the line of duty, harvesting souls of sinners and detaining them for judgement. In times past, when wars had been frequent, he had reaped battlefields and cities alike in the name of Heaven, following orders to the letter to assist the angels of death in their mission, never once feeling remorse over his actions.
Until now.
He had told her to keep away from him.
She deserved better than a man who had killed so many of her kind without flinching.
A role he would gladly resume once his current mission had come to an end.
He was no better than those men who had hurt her.
If anything, he was worse.
For all their noise and disgraceful behaviour, none of them had ever taken the life of another mortal. Amelia believed him good and kind, thought that he was different to the men she had previously been intimate with, but she would never see him that way if she knew the things he had done in his past, in the time before he had lost his wings.
Since being cursed, he had led a different life. Wars had become less frequent and the angels of death had no longer required outside assistance from the other branches of angels in Heaven. His kind, the guardians, had returned to their normal duties, shepherding souls and protecting Heaven, or watching over the mortals, both in the present and in the future.
He had never seen the single pool which held the future. Only a few angels were allowed entry to the room containing it in the grand palatial house of Heaven, and those angels were sworn to silence, allowed only to speak to their superior, who in turn relayed necessary information on critical events to other high ranking angels.
His superior included.
Which led Marcus to believe that he was aware of what fate awaited Amelia.
Marcus curled his fingers into fists and frowned at the vambraces protecting his forearms, watching the way the sunlight danced across the blue armour and reflected off the silver raised edges and the silver buckles on the leather straps against his underarms.
There was something freeing about changing out of his mortal appearance and donning his armour. He felt closer to home again and distant from the goings on of the mortal world around him. He shrugged his shoulders, raising the blue breastplate of his armour and exposing his bare stomach, and then stretched his arms out at his sides and closed his eyes as he unfurled his wings.
Warm summer air tickled his silvery-blue feathers, teasing his senses, and he basked in the sunlight, absorbing the heat and allowing it to relax him and chase away his troubled thoughts.
He was a soldier.
Soldiers followed their orders.
He didn’t have to think. He just had to follow orders and his mission would be over.
Marcus opened his eyes and looked at the infinite sky. The pale blue dome turned to green and then hues of orange near the horizon, scattered with ribbons of cloud that caught the fading sunlight and burned gold and pink. It was beautiful and this evening it would be his playground again, his world in which he would immerse himself to escape the mortal realm and find peace for a few brief hours. He would fly until he ached from the exertion, until he couldn’t beat his wings one last time, and then he would return to his apartment and sleep until morning finally came.
Free of this world.
Five centuries without wings and every day had been torture.
He beat his wings and lifted off the tarred roof only to be struck by a shaft of brilliant white light.
Marcus closed his eyes and waited for the tingling sensation caused by the light to pass before opening them again.
He sighed at the sight of the white double doors ahead and the reception room surrounding him.
All he had wanted was to fly for a while. Couldn’t they have waited? By the time they returned him, it would be deep night. These things never moved swiftly and while they could return him to the same moment they had taken him, they never did.
Marcus pushed the double doors open and marched straight to the dock, facing the same three angels who had questioned him the last time they had brought him here.
“There has been a development.” His superior sat at the head of the triangle closest to Marcus, his sandy hair as neat as his blue armour and the large silver-blue wings tucked against his back.
The dark haired mediator and white-blond haired angel of death murmured in agreement.
“May I ask what this development is?” Marcus hid none of his displeasure at having his plans for the evening ruined. They had brought him here and he would make the most of it. While they hadn’t answered direct questions about his mission, perhaps they would answer one about the date of the event if he asked it in such a way that linked it to this development. “Does it mean my mission will end soon?”
All three angels nodded.
“Your final task approaches.” There was no lie in his superior’s expression, or that of the other two angels. “Soon your mission will end, Marcus.”
“You have been patient in your duty and we appreciate everything you have done for us. Once this final task has been completed, you will be free to return to Heaven.” The mediator to his superior’s left smiled at him and then looked across at the angel of death.
“You must be relieved to know that your final task will be over soon and you can return home,” the white-blond haired man said.
Marcus nodded and his shoulders relaxed with the relief that swept through him but he didn’t quite feel as he had expected to on hearing such good news. There was something about the appearances of all three angels, and the soft way they spoke to him, that set him on edge and filled his head with more questions than ever before.
“What is my final task?” All three angels had mentioned it so all three knew what it was, but the moment the question left his lips, their expressions turned stony and closed.
“You will find out soon enough.” His superior leaned back in his chair on the raised platform. The other two angels seated slightly behind him looked at each other and then at his superior, and then at Marcus.
“In the meantime, you must continue to protect her from the world.” Those words leaving the mediator’s lips startled Marcus into loo
king straight at him.
It was more than he had been told before.
“Am I to believe that there is someone who seeks to harm her?” It had always been there at the back of his mind. Why would a mortal need an angel to watch over them until a certain point in time? Why would they need a protector unless someone intended to hurt them? He had never been told to guide her on her path. His mission had always been phrased in a way that made him believe it was physical protection that she had needed in order to achieve her destiny.
“You must not allow demons to interfere with her existence.”
Marcus’s gaze snapped back to his superior and he stared wide-eyed at him. “Demons?”
The sandy-haired man nodded. “You must keep the female safe until the event that we have witnessed comes to pass.”
“And what is this event?” Marcus knew he had pushed too far again when darkness crossed his superior’s face.
“It is not necessary for you to know that right now, Marcus. We need you to focus on your mission. It has become critical that you gain her trust. Your attempt failed. Your mission was clear. You will get closer to her by any means. Do you understand?”
Marcus wasn’t sure that he wanted to understand.
“What are you implying exactly?” He frowned at his superior, wanting him to say the words so he knew exactly what they were ordering him to do. So everyone here knew and acknowledged the order they were giving him.
Her Guardian Angel Page 5