Nobody's Angel (The Earth Angels)

by Stacy Gail

  “You’re ready for me, aren’t you, Kendall?” He stroked her most sensitive point until she writhed and cried out, and he smiled against her lips. “You’re a dream come true, so responsive you turn me inside out.”

  Responsive? She was about to spontaneously combust. “Now, Zeke.”

  “I want this to be perfect.” His voice was gratifyingly rough as he levered himself over her, supporting his weight on an elbow as he slid into her slick depths with excruciating slowness. She shuddered as the sensation of oneness engulfed her, and she hooked her ankles behind him to complete the fit.

  “Kendall.” Her name whispered out of him, an awestruck, shaken sound. For only a moment he rested his forehead against hers while his body shook with the forces building within. “Oh, what you do to me... You make me helpless.”

  Then he began to move in such a way that Kendall couldn’t help but arch in response, her hips rising to meet his in perfect rhythm. With each smooth stroke the sensations built low in her belly until she thought she would scream with the exquisite tautness. Then, almost before she was prepared for it, the tension broke free, and the spiraling ecstasy shattered through her moments before Zeke’s cries of enraptured fulfillment joined hers.

  Chapter Nine

  Vacuum-packed. Unopened. Pristine, with an expiration date that went all the way into next year. The sight of it was so beautiful it brought tears of deep and everlasting joy to Kendall’s eyes.

  Coffee.

  Dressed once more in the oversized T-shirt, she hummed under her breath as she puttered around the kitchen, secretly mystified at how a full-sized stove had found its way up into Zeke’s hideout. Everything about Zeke was mystifying, she thought, reading the directions on how to bring life back into a packet of powdered eggs. But it wasn’t surprising she felt that way. She was a newcomer to legendary figures, after all. Naturally she was going to have trouble wrapping her mind around a reality she’d thought she understood. But she’d get there. For Zeke, she could do anything.

  No, her acceptance of who and what he was, wasn’t the problem. The problem now was Zeke’s unshakable belief that he was a mistake.

  With the coffee gurgling away in the automatic maker and her hopes high that it might actually be halfway decent, Kendall’s mouth firmed as she poured the egg mixture into a skillet, and opened a can of Spam to slice up and fry. What did it do to a person, to hold a lifelong belief that you weren’t supposed to exist? That at any moment, you could be wiped out of existence? Would it make you bitter? Angry? Filled with self-hatred? The amazing thing was that Zeke seemed to be none of these things. Against all odds, he had a grounded, basically positive image of himself, and a confidence that turned her on no end.

  The only hiccup was that he seemed to think he deserved the label coward. Talk about messed-up thinking. She sighed, sliding their breakfast onto tin camping plates she’d scrounged from a cabinet next to the fridge. There was no doubt in her mind that even if he didn’t have the ten-ton burden of his family’s so-called legacy hanging over his head, he’d still help the defenseless and protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Zeke Reece would still be a hero.

  If only she could convince him of that.

  “Fog’s rolling in.” With his dark hair wet from his shower and wearing nothing but a towel at his waist, Zeke wandered in to pour coffee into a couple of mugs. “I have to admit, I’m actually glad to see it. Flying while the skies are bright and clear always makes me feel like a sitting—or flying—duck. At least with the cover of fog, I can get to the mainland undetected and pick up some supplies to make your stay here more comfortable.”

  “I’m not complaining, though you might be after eating this.” With a grimace, she slid the plates onto the kitchen table, then smiled her thanks when he held her chair for her. “There’s got to be a reason why you never find powdered eggs and fried Spam on restaurant menus. Except maybe in a Monty Python-inspired restaurant,” she reconsidered.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers, and look at it this way—at least this place is well-prepared for the zombie apocalypse.”

  Her laugh choked off before it had fully bloomed. “Wait. That was a joke, right? There’s no such thing as zombies.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief. “Just checking.”

  “I said, not that I know of. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” He laughed at the look she gave him before he bent and nuzzled her lips with a long, lingering kiss. “Thank you for being such a good sport about being all the way out here on the edge of nowhere.”

  “Are you crazy? I love this place.” A piercingly sweet thrill bloomed in her chest at the kiss, and she licked her lips in an effort to hold onto the flavor that somehow seemed tinged with reverence. “If I had wings, I would fly out here all the time, fog or no fog.”

  With a snort, he sat across from her and doctored her coffee just the way she liked it before doing his own. “No, you wouldn’t. Trust me on this.”

  “Is the fear of being spotted the reason you fly only in cases of extreme emergency?”

  “Being spotted by normal people doesn’t bother me a bit,” came the surprising response. “In fact, you’ve already discovered that it’s happened more than a few times, and has even been reported on. People have labeled me The Guardian Angel and accepted me as either a lunatic or an urban legend and don’t give me another thought, so that’s not a big problem. The one thing I do care about is...” He pointed upward.

  “Ah.” She tried some ketchup on her eggs, and to her delight found they were almost edible. “So you’re not worried about being seen. You’re worried about being seen, right?”

  He nodded. “I guess I’m worried about not being viewed in a completely human way, when basically that’s really all that I am. Humans don’t fly, so I hate to do it out of fear of retribution.”

  “Humans don’t move so fast they blur, either,” she pointed out, not quite sure how to approach this touchy subject without rocking his internal boat. But she had to try. Zeke had one hell of a complex about being different, and it blinded him to a few truths that seemed so obvious to her. “Yet you do that all the time, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. So?”

  “So nothing has ever happened to you in the form of punishment.”

  He shrugged, shoveling down the last of his eggs. “True.”

  “And you use your soulfire...what? Once, twice a week?”

  “Try once or twice a night. Sometimes even more than that. San Francisco is one hell of a big city, which means there are lots of people who need a guiding hand into the afterlife.”

  “And that darkness thing you do, to make yourself invisible...”

  “Wait, how do you know about that?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you do it, Zeke. I now know what to look for.”

  “Investigative journalist,” he grumbled. “I can never sneak anything by you, can I, sweetheart?”

  “No, though it’s cute how you keep trying.” Moved beyond all boundaries of rational thinking at the endearment and the way he’d remembered how she liked her coffee, she put a hand to her spinning heart. “Have you ever received any punishment for that darkness thing?”

  “Pulling at shadows, and no. I haven’t.” Looking as though he didn’t know whether to be irritated or admiring, he downed his coffee before he began to clear the table. “What’s your point, Kendall?”

  “I guess I’m just trying to make you think. What do you think my point is?”

  His sigh was heavily put-upon as he dropped the plates into the kitchen sink. “You tell me.”

  “I know you do your best to lead a normal human life, and you would never think of abusing the gifts that have been handed down to you. But there are things you do every night in order to keep your city safe—things that are definitely not human. Yet in all these years, you’ve never once been punished for these non-human actions.”

  “So?”

  Good gr
ief, the man could be such a mule when he wanted to be. “This celestial silence tells me that either there’s an unreasonable belief going on up in heaven that no one ever dies in San Francisco, so no one is ever sent here to guide souls into the next life, or...”

  “Or?”

  “Or this silence from above is approval of what you, a descendant of the Nephilim, are doing.”

  “The words approval and Nephilim don’t usually belong in the same sentence,” he drawled, though there was a thoughtful frown drawing his brows together as he leaned back against the dated burnt orange counter. “I don’t know, Kendall. My instincts still tell me it’s a good idea to lay low and live as humanly as possible.”

  “Then go ahead and keep following those instincts.” With a smile, she rose to slide her hands over the impressive planes of his pectorals before she laced her fingers behind his neck. As long as she got him thinking that maybe he wasn’t the abomination he thought he was, she’d done enough. “They haven’t steered you wrong yet, have they?”

  “Not at all.” The frown vanished as his hands came to rest on the swell of her hips. “Do you want to know what my instincts told me the moment I saw you?”

  “Wipe all that gross blood off that woman?”

  “Besides that.” A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest as he bent once more to her lips so that he could speak against them. “My instincts told me that I had to touch you until your shocky, cold skin heated under my hands. They told me to make your frightened eyes darken with the hunger of passion, and empty your mind of thoughts of death by filling it with the joy of still being alive. They told me to cover your body with mine and stroke you until you were shivering, and crying, and coming as I buried myself inside you.” His hands tightened on her hips before he lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and deposited her on the counter. The rough brush of terrycloth rubbed the insides of her knees as he positioned himself between them, and her heart stuttered to a standstill when the towel-covered hardness of his erection slid along the inside of her thigh. “Between you and me, I think I’ve got very good instincts.”

  “I agree,” she whispered, her skin flushing with the fever of desire even as an exquisite dampness bloomed between her thighs. “I definitely agree.”

  * * *

  Leaving her side long enough to retrieve a condom from his nearly exhausted supply in his wallet, Zeke realized he had to face facts. He was addicted. A stone-cold junkie with a habit that was eating him alive, and the worst part of it was he had no interest in kicking it. All he wanted was more.

  He was well and truly hooked on Kendall.

  He could have told her not to bother with putting the T-shirt back on, and with one quick move he had the offensive barrier removed. He dropped it to the floor along with his towel, and he couldn’t help but laugh breathlessly at her little purr of approval.

  “I don’t know why you even bothered getting dressed,” he chided, roaming his hands up the ladder of her rib cage to cradle the pouting, feminine weight of her breasts. Again and again his mind reeled at how perfectly she fit his hands, as though she had been made solely for him. “The moment I saw that shirt on you, all I wanted to do was tear it off.”

  “Now now, don’t be such a knuckle-dragger.” But her tone belied her words, thrumming with an excitement that made him think she wouldn’t have minded some fabric-tearing. “Have you ever tried cooking naked? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I would recommend this.” Smiling his delight, Zeke pushed the rounded bounty of her breasts together, and knew he’d never see a more beautiful sight. “And this.” Lowering his head, he ran his tongue along the soft line of her cleavage, her salty-sweet flavor filling his senses like an intoxicant. “And this.” His thumbs mercilessly chafed the rose-flushed nipples to sensitized peaks, and he turned his head to draw first one, then the other into his mouth.

  “Zeke.” Her fingers slid into the dampness of his hair, clutching at it with a gentle savagery that made his scalp tingle. “Why do you like to tease me?”

  “Because you love it.” And so did he. The helpless, love-lost sounds she made when he touched her ensnared him more securely than any trap known to man, goading him to push her to make more. She was so open in her passion, so willing to share what she felt with him. It made him want to spoil her, indulge her every desire, until pleasure from him was all she knew, and all she craved.

  He wanted her to be as hooked on him as he was on her.

  Primal urgency spasmed his lower abdominal muscles, a torment of exquisite intensity, but he held it ruthlessly in check. The insistent throb of his manhood propelled him ever closer toward the jagged edge of madness, but he pushed that back too, because Kendall was right. He did revel in teasing her. She was so responsive, so lush in her passion, he couldn’t help it. Her pleasure became his, and right now that was the kind of pleasure he was interested in.

  His hands slid from her breasts to her thighs, his fingers curling under her knees to spread her legs apart as wide as they would go as his mouth trailed lower.

  “Oh, my.” Her voice was tremulous, expectant. Excited. “Zeke...”

  “Quiet. I’m concentrating.” There was a tiny beauty mark on her stomach he hadn’t noticed before, and he bathed it with his tongue even as the bold glide of his hand traveled to the cleft between her thighs. He savored the audible hitch in her breath as he ground against her, and shuddered at her whimper when he closed in on the epicenter of her pleasure, swollen and slick with her desire. He teased it without letup, drinking in her every cry as her body writhed with an unbearable pleasure. Her hips pumped out a sinuous rhythm that called to him to fill her, fill her now. Yet he still resisted with the last scrap of sanity he possessed, torturing them both by withholding the gratification he knew was waiting for him in her molten depths.

  The mere thought of sheathing himself in her sent a spasm of need through him, and if possible he grew harder still. He was losing it, losing everything, his body clenching in a delirium-inducing agony of sweet sensation, but with everything in him he wanted to make this perfect for her. With the last vestiges of his control, Zeke bent his head over her, his breathing now as ragged as hers as he replaced the demanding friction of his fingers against her most vulnerable point with his teeth and tongue.

  Her incoherent cries rose to a breath-starved scream of undulating ecstasy. It wracked her body so ferociously it kicked off an echo of that fulfillment deep within his lower regions, to the point where his formidable control at last reached its breaking point. With her pleasure cresting, he rose, slid the protection in place and took her hand to wrap it around his throbbing, iron-hard erection. Greedily she pushed it into her gloving tightness as if desperate for the feel of him inside her. The sheer heat of her body scorched him, burning him alive even as he drove mindlessly into her in search of that magnificent fire. He chased after it like a madman, pumping into the one woman who made everything in the world vanish as insignificant, until she was all he knew or understood. He was wild, lost in sensation, until the wildness turned and devoured him, the ecstasy he found in her so excruciating he could do nothing more than give into its beautiful, endless shattering.

  This, more than any other, was his heaven.

  Chapter Ten

  “Tell me more about James Denton, Kendall.”

  Cuddled against Zeke’s side, her head pillowed against his shoulder and his wings tucked under him, Kendall opened sleepy eyes. Though it was nearly midday, the crow’s nest loft was dim, awash with the muted light of a cold, foggy day. Fitful sprinkles spattered against the glass every now and again, and the thick fog cocooned them in a pearly world all their own. For Kendall it would have been perfect, but Zeke just had to go and bring reality into her drifting bliss.

  Then again, she probably should have expected as much from a guy who took the job of cleaning up his corner of the world as seriously as life and death itself.

  “He’s the son of the guy who went nuts down on Fisherman’s Wharf.
He’s also the stalker-slash-student of the young woman and professor who died at the community college,” she mumbled around a yawn. “Why? I thought you said it wasn’t possible for a geist to be controlled. If anyone would know that, it would be you.”

  There was a beat of silence. “I may have overstated that. I don’t actually know for certain whether it’s possible or not.”

  That got her attention. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” He’d found a black feather on the sheet and used it to trail a slow path down the arm she had draped over his stomach. “All I know is that from the beginning, this particular geist hasn’t acted like any other geist I’ve seen.”

  “Because of its ability to possess people? You once told me geists aren’t normally capable of that.”

  “They’re not, they’re too unstable mentally. But even more than that, it’s the way it keeps evading me that’s impossible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Twice now I’ve gotten a hold of that geist. Both times it was literally ripped out of my soulfire grasp, just when I was on the verge of crossing it over. I didn’t know anything could be ripped from the spiritual binds of soulfire.”

  The touch of the feather shivered along her flesh. “You make it sound like something external is ripping the geist away.”

  “I see something weird whenever it’s around,” he said without answering, and she could feel him shake his head. “It reminds me of heat waves coming off a sun-baked road. It’s always around this particular geist, buzzing in my ears and messing with my head. Do you see anything like that?”

  “All I see is a cloud of smoke. That heat-wave distortion thing must be another angel of death gift.”

  His scoff told her what he thought of the so-called gift he’d been given. “I’ve been thinking about that rippling effect. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s somehow connected to the bizarre behavior of this geist. And that leads me back to your theory of a puppet master pulling this geist’s strings.”