“I need to get over there.” Rowena jumped up, grabbed her red shoes up off the floor and hopped about pulling them on with one hand as she grabbed her bag.
“I’ll call a cab. You’ve had too much to drink to risk driving. And I’m coming with you.”
Rowena didn’t argue, feeling she’d need a bit of moral support to face this particular escapee from the Veil. The father should have been trapped for hours yet, but somehow he’d broken free, which meant Rowena might well be out of her depth. This character wasn’t at all like Stephen’s mother.
~* * * *~
Rowena and Stephen paid the cab off and approached the house cautiously. None of the lights were on inside. Everything felt peaceful, until Rowena focused a bit more and found it was deathly calm.
“Has she gone to bed?” Stephen whispered softly.
“You know as much as I do,” she replied vaguely, even though she knew in her gut something was way off.
Rowena shivered as she felt the presence of evil. Not just bad-tempered or angry, but true evil. She also felt Bob inside the house, and someone else, someone not dead yet not alive. Whoever, whatever they were, they weren’t inside though.
“Round the back,” Rowena whispered following the odd feeling and her instincts, and crept ahead, letting herself through the gate at the side of the house.
In the middle of the lawn stood a man, stripped to the waist, rippling with muscles and wearing only a pair of dark jeans. Even his feet were bare. His long dark hair curtained his face as he looked straight at the house. “Rowena,” he said softly.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, not sure whether to be afraid or indignant. He wasn’t human, that was for sure.
“We know our own, Miss Engle. Do you know what your name means? It comes from the Old English for angel. You were given the name by your father.”
“What do you know of my father? I don’t even know who he was, so how do you?”
The strange man smiled at her. Goddess, he was gorgeous! “Your father was not human, Rowena. He was an angel, like me. That is why you can see those who have passed through the Veil when they come back. We have a problem with this one though. He does not conform, so you will not be enough to send him through. I suggest we concentrate our efforts on returning him to the other side. When that is done, I will tell you more about who you are.”
“Do angels always look that hot?” Stephen whispered in Rowena’s ear. She could hear his desire for the stranger. She could almost smell it. Stephen was suddenly a walking hormone factory. Rowena knew the feeling.
“How the bloody hell would I know?” she whispered back shortly, really hoping she didn’t sounds as much like a seething ball of lust as he did.
The back door opened and Bob walked out to face them, a frown on his face. “Miss Engle? Why are you here?”
“The sensors showed the father had returned. I was worried about Hannah. Is she okay?”
“She’s upstairs sleeping. Dave called earlier and he broke off their engagement. I don’t know why he did that. It was very sudden. She cried herself to sleep.”
The angel took a step closer to Bob, his head tipping from one side to the other. “You should not be here. This is not your job, Watcher.”
“My name is Bob. Hannah is my great-granddaughter. I watch over her. That is my job.”
“You should watch over all, not just one. That is your purpose in this realm. The child may be your blood, Watcher, but you have a duty to all.”
Bob frowned at the angel. “I do not understand.”
“I am Adlai, a Watcher like you. We are sent here to observe humanity and report back to The Presences.”
“This is all fascinating, but we’ve got more pressing concerns right now,” Rowena pointed out, checking the readings in Hannah’s bedroom. “The father’s in Hannah’s room and it’s freezing up there. If it gets any colder, it might well kill her.”
She didn’t bother waiting for anyone else, just ran inside, heading straight up to Hannah’s bedroom. The cold was almost unbearable and she shivered violently as she reached for the door handle. The door wouldn’t open.
“Hannah! Hannah, wake up!” Rowena thumped her fist on the door, but no sound came from the other side.
“She cannot hear you,” the father said beside her. He smirked in satisfaction. “She will go to the others now. She will remain pure.”
Rowena wanted to slap the smirk right off his face, but that wasn’t the way to deal with an evil force. “What have you done to her?”
“He has sent her soul beyond the Veil,” Adlai replied quietly. “She is past the help of a half-angel now. If you wish to retrieve her, you will have to trust me, Rowena.” He moved closer and warmth radiated off him, making her want his arms round her to ward off the freezing cold.
She tried the door handle again, but couldn’t shift it. Shaking the door in frustration, Rowena even tried kicking it. All that did was hurt her foot.
“You will not get through. He has barred all others from inside.”
“This is all wrong!” she exclaimed. “There must be some way to get rid of him!”
The father laughed at her. “You cannot defeat me.”
“Come away, Rowena,” Adlai urged, placing his hand on her arm. A charge shot through her from the point of contact, knocking her to the floor. She gaped at the angel, stunned by the force of the desire that had floored her. She wanted him. Immediately, in every way possible. He bent and swept her up in his arms, his eyes locked on hers. She saw then they were a strange mixture of purple and white. She hadn’t been in the light long enough to make out their colour before, and it was far too dark outside to try.
He carried her from the house, ignoring Stephen demanding what was wrong with her. Adlai didn’t respond and Rowena couldn’t, not when he was touching her. It was almost more than she could bear as need pulsed through her. She needed him with a desperation that wasn’t natural. When she should have been working out how to help Hannah, she was lusting after this angel like a bitch in heat. It was embarrassing, or it would be when she thought about it later.
“I will take you home,” Adlai whispered in Rowena’s ear. “I know where you live.”
For a second, she thought she should be worried about that, but she couldn’t muster the feeling. All her feelings were tied up with the intense desire dominating her entire being.
“Rowena, you can’t go off with him. You know nothing about him,” Stephen objected angrily, grabbing Adlai’s arm and dragging him to a halt. The angel turned to look at him, frowning with puzzlement, his head cocked to one side a little.
“You should not be here, human. This is not the place you are meant to be in now.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Stephen demanded.
“He is waiting for you. That is where you should be.” Adlai lowered Rowena to her feet and put his fingers to Stephen’s forehead. “This is where you are supposed to be,” he said.
Stephen vanished.
“Where did he go?!” Rowena cried, trying to pull away from the angel, but he held her tight.
“To the place he should have been in this night. Another is waiting for him. Do not feel concerned for him, Rowena, he is safer now. He should not have been here tonight. Staying would have meant his death.”
She stared at the place where Stephen had been. “I don’t understand. Where has he gone? What do you mean, safer?”
“Rowena, I will explain everything, but we have to leave this place now. Close your eyes.”
Though she didn’t want to, she couldn’t stop herself doing it. She felt as if she was being squeezed through the eye of a needle for a long second; stretched and pulled until she could be wrapped round the entire world. Then her body snapped back to how it should be.
“We are here, Rowena,” Adlai said into her hair, holding her close, but he didn’t let her go.
She opened her eyes and found she was in the living room of her own flat. Whatever Adlai had
done, it made her want to puke. Throwing up down a sinfully hot, half naked angel didn’t strike her as the right way to go about things, so she ran to the bathroom and retched into the loo, barely getting the lid up in time.
“My apologies, Rowena. I did not think you would be affected thus.”
She sluiced cold water over her face, cursing herself for doing something as unattractive as chucking up in front of the hottest man she’d ever seen in her life. Well . . . being, not man.
When she felt a bit less shaky, she cautiously left the bathroom and headed for the freezer to grab the open bottle of vodka inside, knocking some back without bothering to pour it into a glass. Vodka was always her ‘go to’ drink when she felt out of her depth. She was positively drowning right now.
Shaking herself, she rounded on Adlai. “Right, now make with some answers. Where did you send Stephen?”
“He should not have been with you, Rowena. His one mate was supposed to meet him this night, so I sent him there.”
She wanted to groan, wondering how she was going to fuck that up for Stephen. She didn’t doubt for a minute that she would, even though she would never actually want to.
“What about Hannah and Bob?”
“Hannah’s soul has been forced beyond the Veil, so we must retrieve it and return it to her flesh. The spirit you think of as Bob is a Watcher, like me. I do not know why he has forgotten what he is. It may be connected to the spirit you know as the father. Watchers are supposed to observe and maintain a balance. The way we do that is creating those like you, Rowena. We cannot interfere directly, only arm humans with the tools they need to fight back by passing on our gifts. We can assist your kind a little, but we are meant to be impartial.”
“So I was made deliberately?” she asked tentatively.
Adlai inclined his head, seeming far too matter-of-fact about it. “You were.”
“How?”
A slight smile touched the corners of his mouth. “In the usual way.”
“I want more details. Was my mother raped by an angel, seduced? I need to understand this properly.”
“She was not forced. Your father did seduce her, so she went to him willingly. I do not know more than that, because he vanished the night you were conceived.”
“Vanished? How can an angel just vanish?”
“Again, I do not know. I suspect he was killed by a demon to stop him fathering a child. It was fortunate you already existed by then.”
Rowena decided this was a situation that needed a lot more vodka, so she tipped the bottle neck to her lips again. Finding out her father had been an angel and that he’d been killed the night she’d been conceived was all a bit much in one go, especially after what had happened with Hannah, and the shock of lust for Adlai. Her head was spinning out of control.
The vodka burned down her throat and into her belly, giving her something else to concentrate on for a moment, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to be held close to Adlai’s near-naked body.
“Rowena, please try to control your thoughts. The pheromones you give off are very potent to one such as I.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered under her breath. He knew what she was thinking about him? Now that was just unfair! And how was she meant to control her thoughts when he was practically naked? “If you don’t like it, put some bloody clothes on!”
“I cannot manifest more than I have already,” Adlai told her.
She groaned quietly as she understood what he meant: his jeans were only a figment of his imagination, not even real. That only made things worse. Loads worse. Now all she could think about was how he would look if they weren’t there.
“Please, Rowena, change the course of your thoughts,” he said, his voice strained.
“No. You turn up out of nowhere looking like a girl’s wet dream made flesh, with nothing on but imaginary jeans, and you expect me not to think about jumping you? Not going to happen, buddy. If you don’t like my pheromones, change the way you look. A beer-gut would work for me, bad teeth, anything like that.”
“I cannot change my appearance. And I did not say I dislike the scents you give off. We are very susceptible to humans. It is our purpose to reproduce with them.”
She stopped breathing for a second or two. “So what the hell am I meant to do?”
He moved closer and touched her arm, sending lust curling through her belly, heating her body. Everything inside her was gearing up for the orgasm of her life. “I would suggest we have sex, then you will not be giving off the same pheromones.”
Stepping back from his touch, Rowena swallowed. Sex had basically been on the cards for her night from the second Hannah had mentioned Stephen’s name that morning. But that didn’t mean she was just going to hop into bed with someone - something - she had only just met. Screwing Stephen, someone she knew well, was one thing. Fucking every hot stranger who crossed her path just wasn’t her style. Ok, maybe it had been a couple of times, but she had no intention of it being her style tonight.
“Once you are pregnant, I will be better able to work with you. I have been commanded to stay with you and ensure the child is safely delivered.”
“Whoa! Hold on there, buster! I’m definitely not in the market for a baby daddy!”
Adlai frowned at her. “But you desire me. For what other purpose would you do that than to reproduce?”
“You must be a really shit Watcher if you have to ask that,” she laughed harshly. “I like sex. End of story. That’s what condoms were invented for.”
“Condoms?”
“Mother, what planet have you been watching? Yes, condoms. Please, do not ask me to explain them to you. When was the last time you looked in on the world?”
“Two hundred and sixty eight years ago,” the angel answered immediately.
Putting a hand on her forehead and huffing in exasperation, Rowena headed to her bedroom to grab a condom from the bedside draw where she had a few packets, and took it out to Adlai, throwing the foil square at him. “Open that up and have a think about it. They’re quite self-explanatory.”
Tearing open the wrapper, the angel took out the sheath and unrolled it. It hung from his thumb and finger as he held it up before his face to study. Rowena wanted to laugh at the concept of an angel pondering over the use of a condom. It should be hysterical. Any other time, she would have been rolling on the floor.
“It prevents conception,” he finally said.
“Bingo! Sex with no babies: the perfect solution. There’s no way I’m letting anyone inside me without one of those on, so learn to deal with the pheromones or find a way to disguise the way you look.”
Adlai tipped his head to one side, seeming to think things over. “Very well. I will use one of these devices. You pheromones will change once your desire is sated. That will be sufficient for us to do what will need to be done.”
“Not the bloody point!” Rowena screeched. “I wasn’t offering!”
“Rowena.” His voice slipped over her body like a caress, causing delightful shivers everywhere, especially between her legs.
“Stop messing with me!”
“I am not doing anything, Rowena. I can only respond to your needs. I am not capable of experiencing lust unless it is in response to that of my assigned female. But we do have a great deal to do, so it might be best if you put an end to our suffering sooner rather than later.”
Rowena was about to object when his jeans disappeared. Great Mother, he was well made, and rock hard. She swallowed back the words that hadn’t quite made it out of her mouth, her mind refusing to come up with any new ones. She drank in the sight of him and licked her lips. All muscle and tanned skin, he had the kind of body that would make a male model weep in envy. When he walked towards her, she couldn’t even muster the thought processes to make herself move away. Her feet plain refused to shift. They certainly weren’t listening to the tiny bit of her brain still trying to be rational. The problem was, the rest of her brain w
as clambering over the rational bit to get at the body in front of her.
It should have been like a dream come true, having Mr.. Hottie on tap and primed whenever she was in the mood. Who in their right mind would actually turn down a chance like this?
Maybe what was really going on was that she was asleep in her bed and having a dream born of her frustration over things with Stephen. If it was a dream, then she could do whatever the hell she wanted with the man she’d conjured up. She could push him on her bed, straddle him and ride that glorious cock until she fell apart around it.
Adlai stopped when he was toe to toe with her, seeming to wait for her to make the first move. Throwing all caution to the wind, Rowena pushed up to meet his lips, telling herself it was only a dream and none of it was real. It couldn’t be real. So much sensation wasn’t normal. His lips seemed to have a direct line to her core. His kiss rippled through the very centre of her, almost making her come on the spot.
Scooping her up in his arms, Adlai took her to her bedroom and laid her on the bed to remove her clothes, his lips moving over each new bit of skin he uncovered. Her fingers sank into his hair, directing where his mouth teased her. As his tongue found her most sensitive flesh, a soft moan escaped her and her hips undulated to position his tongue more precisely, teasing her until she could take no more. She all but screamed her orgasm for the whole world to hear.
He took a condom from the still open drawer and rolled it down his erection like he’d been doing it for years. Then he moved her legs apart and sank all that length inside her body.
Rowena cried out, her body going into sensory overload from so much contact with his. Her legs wrapped round his waist and she sank her nails into his back, clinging on before she disintegrated in ecstasy again. She gave herself up to the dream.
Three
Rowena recalled the dream immediately and groaned, wanting to curl up in shame that she had got so worked up she’d conjured all that up in her head.
“Good morning, Rowena.” Her eyes sprang open. Adlai was in her bed, watching her with a slightly puzzled frown.
Voracious Vixens, 13 Novels of Sexy Horror and Hot Paranormal Romance Page 153