Falling Hard

by J. K. Coi

  “What are you really doing here? Where the hell did you come from?”

  “I told you—”

  “No. You haven’t told me anything, and I want the truth. You appear out of nowhere, say you’re trying to protect me. But you rarely speak, and when you do it’s in monosyllabic bursts of odd words like pledge.” He paused, trailing calloused fingers across her cheek. “What’s going on inside your head?” His voice dropped to a low murmur she could feel rumbling from his chest. “What do I have to do to get a genuine reaction out of you?” His thumb dragged over her bottom lip in a slow glide, causing the odd thumping of her heart to escalate.

  “I—I don’t know what you mean.” These weren’t questions she was really required to answer, were they? Amelia was aware of how closely Gabriel had been watching her. Always. As if trying to see beyond her face, looking for someone else, someone more, inside her. What he didn’t yet realize—

  There was no one else. Nothing to see.

  Amelia was an empty shell. She’d given up her emotions to the will of the Archangels long ago. Since then, she’d known only duty. Duty had brought her to Gabriel. But it wasn’t what she focused on now.

  His thumb brushed across her mouth again. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d parted her lips and her tongue darted out to taste the dry saltiness of his skin. His gaze dropped to watch and he sucked in a sharp breath.

  She started to draw aside, away from him, but Gabriel wouldn’t let her go. His lips curled in satisfaction, as if he’d solved an interesting puzzle.

  “Is that it?” His low, murmured voice melted her limbs. He leaned closer, so close the belt buckle at his waist dug into her belly. She could feel the heavy beats of his heart pounding in time with her own. “I should have known it was just a matter of a little…physical contact.”

  Her brain and body mired in a hazy fog of confusion, Amelia reared back only to remember her shoulders were against the wall and there was nowhere for her to go. Gabriel’s mouth was only a few inches from hers and descending.

  With a flick of her wrist, Amelia sent him flying across the room.

  The rash move surprised her—perhaps more than it did him—because it smacked of fear and desperation, and both were things an angel just didn’t feel.

  She also wasn’t supposed to know temper or annoyance, longing or need—and yet she finally understood she’d been feeling all these the past few days with Gabriel constantly poking and prodding her.

  Now she felt shame and worry on top of it all.

  “Gabriel.” Rushing to his side, Amelia dropped to her knees and reached for him. “Are you unharmed?”

  He groaned and glared up at her. “What the fuck was that?”

  “I shouldn’t have done that. I apologize. It was unfair of me to use my strength against you. Unacceptable.” He was bleeding. She could smell the faint coppery tang of it through his clothes. Reaching for his shirt, she tried lifting the cotton hem over his abdomen to get a look at the bandage covering his stab wound.

  “Unfair?” He smacked her hand away and sat up slowly, glaring at her. “You’re the size of a munchkin and you threw me across the goddamn room. How did you do that?”

  “We should examine your injury. I believe your wound has started to bleed again.”

  “I’ll check my own injury, thank you very much.” He groaned and got to his feet, his attention focused on her every move.

  Amelia knew she’d made a very big mistake. She tried reaching for him again, to make sure he hadn’t sustained any extensive damage as a result of her rashness. “Again, I’m very sor—”

  “Just stop.” He sighed, lifting a hand between them. “And for God’s sake, please don’t apologize again. Hell, I’m probably the one who should be sorry. I was pushing my luck and you had every right to send me flying—although I still can’t believe you did. I want to know how you managed it. That was…impressive.”

  Amelia blinked, unsure what to say. As usual, it was better to say nothing.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m sorry Mr. Gunn, Lila isn’t available to come to the telephone at the moment. Can I take a message for her?”

  Gabriel directed his scowl into the phone, at the ultra-stiff, too-polite voice giving him the runaround. He’d known Lila’s mother for almost fifteen years, since David started dating her daughter back in high school. Until now she’d always been friendly, even treating him as a part of her family. “No, Janine. I don’t want to leave a damn message.” He mocked her descent into formality by putting emphasis on her first name. “I’ve left twenty fucking messages already that she apparently hasn’t gotten.”

  “Please, Gabriel. There’s no call for that kind of language.” Lila’s mother let out an exaggerated sigh to top off her prissy rebuke.

  What the hell? What kind of language were you supposed to use when your best friend was dead?

  There were so many raw emotions inside him, and every one was made worse because of Lila’s avoidance. He wondered if it might not just be better to tear the beating hunk of flesh out of his chest and be done with it.

  “Please try to understand how Lila feels.” Now the woman sounded condescending. “This has been very difficult for her and she needs some time to come to grips with her loss.”

  Gabriel threw a hand up as he paced the thickly carpeted floor of the library. “I know it’s hard for her. That’s why—I just want to help. Talk to her. I need to—”

  “I’m going to have to hang up now, Gabriel.” She paused. “It might be better if you don’t call anymore for a little while.”

  The line went dead. Gabriel stared down at his cell, cursing a blue streak before he threw the damn thing into the corner. He was glad for the crash and the flying shards of plastic. He swung around to kick the chair over too, sending it hurtling into the wall.

  Stalking the room in a circle like an angry, pent-up tiger, he looked for something else to break. Hurt and frustration radiated from him in thick, potent waves that seemed to bounce off the walls before coming right back at him at double-and triple-strength.

  “Gabriel?”

  With a harsh growl, he jerked around. Amelia stood in the door watching him. She looked neat and composed, as always. Her abiding calm only made him feel angrier, more volatile.

  Peace and serenity weren’t states of mind he’d ever achieved easily. His temper was always quick to rise and quicker to explode. David had been the one who knew best how to rein him in and calm him down—and when to cut out and leave him the hell alone for a while.

  The way Gabriel was feeling, he very much doubted even David would have had any luck calming him today.

  He walked to the opposite side of the room.

  “Jesus, Amelia. Get out of here.” He flinched. His voice was hoarse with the devastation overflowing his soul. He wished to God he knew the secret of Amelia’s iron-willed control, but since he didn’t, the last thing he wanted was for her to see him like this. “Go. Before I do something else I’m going to regret today.”

  “You are very agitated.”

  Looking up to the ceiling as if to ask the powers above for strength, he barked out a laugh. “You think?”

  “Will you tell me what is bothering you?”

  The clinical tone of her voice, lacking empathy or depth, snapped something in him. He swung around. “Fuck, woman. Are you completely empty in there? Is that heart of yours good for anything besides pumping lifeless blood through your frigid veins?”

  Amelia winced. A tiny thing.

  She turned to go without a word.

  “Ah, shit. Look, I’m sorry.” Gabriel had just demonstrated once again why he was a selfish, thoughtless bastard who didn’t deserve to be around decent people, didn’t deserve the friends who’d stuck by him all these years. Friends like David—now gone forever.

  Dragging his hands over his face, he turned away again, propping an arm against the large French door leading out to the balcony. He thumped his forehead on the cool gla
ss, staring out without seeing any part of the starlit vista beyond. “You just need to go. Get out and leave me the hell alone for a while. I need to…calm down.”

  Please. Please leave. He didn’t want to hurt her. He hurt so badly and felt so alone with his pain, but he didn’t really want to drag anyone else down into it with him.

  Closing his eyes, he waited for her to close the door behind her.

  When he felt her hand on his arm instead, he groaned. “Amelia, damn it—”

  “Let me help you,” she murmured.

  “You can’t. Why the hell would you even want to?” He opened his eyes, his gaze meeting her pale reflection in the door. “God, woman. I don’t know what to do or think. My best friend was murdered before my eyes. His wife—also a friend—won’t speak to me now and I don’t blame her one bit.”

  He shook his head. “And then there’s you.” He frowned. His gaze took in the soft light in her eyes and fullness of her lips before dropping to her small but curvy breasts. “You, with your—” He broke off. That wasn’t a good direction for either of them, especially in his particular frame of mind.

  “Everything about you is such a big fucking secret. When you do lower yourself to speak, I don’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth.” His hand fisted against the glass. “Hell. I’m so damn angry. Furious with the world and everyone in it. All this hate…and my hold on it is slipping.” He blinked and shook his head, feeling ridiculous for having said so much, hoping she wouldn’t see his hopelessness. “I just—”

  “Shh. Don’t.” She moved into his side, lifting her hand to his temple. “You don’t have to explain yourself to the likes of me.” Pushing the hair from his forehead, she twined a longish lock between her thumb and index finger and watched it slide over her skin.

  He wondered about her words as the sensual examination continued. She drew her fingers down the line of his cheekbone and jaw, her touch so gentle. She hesitated before dragging her thumb across his lips as he had done to her earlier. “Soft,” she whispered, seeming mesmerized and thoughtful. “Soft and stern at the same time.”

  Bewitched himself, Gabriel held still and let her trace the lines of his face. Her intimate caress was anything but impersonal, anything but cold, and he felt worse for having accused her of such callousness.

  Finally, she blinked, as if coming out of a light trance. Her fingers dropped, but only so she could fold her hand into his. He squeezed back. “I may be able to help ease some of your pain, if you’ll let me.”

  Tight. He held her too tightly, but couldn’t let go.

  She pulled him to the large leather sofa in front of the cold gas fireplace.

  With a groan of surprise, Gabriel tried to stop her. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but…” Not that he hadn’t been thinking up hundreds of different ways of getting Amelia’s clothes off, but this wasn’t how he wanted it to happen—no pity fucks for the famous musician, if you please—especially after the way he’d treated her today.

  Pushing him down onto the couch, she took a breath and started to…sing.

  Gabriel’s mouth fell open in shock. She sang softly at first, but with such range and power.

  Holy shit.

  Everything he’d suspected about her voice…all of it was completely wrong.

  She was amazing. Like nothing else in this world.

  But her song wasn’t a song so much as it was a beautiful, wordless requiem composed of the purest and most perfect soprano Gabriel had ever heard. Every note flawless—better than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams. Every high brought a tear to his eye, every low started an echo in his bones.

  A small part of him wanted to fight the calming effect her voice was having on him, insisting he deserved this pain. He needed to keep the guilt—over what had happened to David, and in payment for everything his family had lost—but Amelia’s song was too powerful to resist giving everything over to her.

  Gabriel leaned back into the sofa cushions and closed his eyes to better see the music. The color of her voice was a deep rose that swirled and twirled like a creamy liquid ribbon in his head and around his heart.

  Letting out a long, cleansing breath, he allowed the song to spread through his body and warm him. He gave himself up to Amelia, to the power of her voice. Soon, just as she had promised, he began to feel the knots of anger and tension slowly loosening.

  What seemed an eternity later—but still too soon—her voice softened, lowered to a whisper, then faded as she stopped singing altogether.

  After the amazing gift she had just given him, Gabriel didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do anything to break the spell. Not until the last echo of the last note had passed from the room did he open his eyes. She was looking back at him. Such beautiful eyes. Strong and steady. Gabriel thought he could still see the magic of her song reflected in them, a visible element of what made her so special and different. An image flashed in his mind from the night of the attack, of a beautiful glowing goddess looking over him.

  But that had only been his imagination. That had been the pain talking.

  “Who are you?”

  She looked unnerved by the question and moved to step away, but Gabriel reached for her arm. “I’m sorry, Amelia. Again. Hell, I didn’t mean to start interrogating you, not after that. Please stay with me for a few more minutes.”

  She hesitated briefly before sitting beside him on the sofa.

  “That was…amazing. Thank you.”

  She nodded.

  “Your voice is…” Gabriel couldn’t possibly describe just how beautiful it had been, how it made him feel. “Have you ever considered singing professionally?”

  “No. I sing only for…my family.”

  “Your family? Are they close by? Do you see them often?”

  She paused. Shook her head.

  Gabriel waited, but it seemed that was all he was going to get. She was already drawing away, their brief interlude over. He had hundreds more questions, but hey, that was a hell of a lot more than she’d ever offered him before. Maybe he was making more progress than he’d thought.

  As small as it seemed, this minor success was enough to convince Gabriel to keep chipping away at the impenetrable armor of the lovely Ms. White.

  Heart pounding, Amelia abruptly excused herself from the library and hurried to the bedroom she’d been given. She needed to escape Gabriel’s larger-than-life presence, if only for a few moments to pull herself together.

  His eyes had watched her go, the questions he’d barely refrained from asking hanging in the air. The suspicions he rightly felt continuing to stand between them.

  Leaning against the closed door, she took several deep breaths, trying to regain her equanimity. It had been a mistake to share her angel song with a human—with him. A colossal mistake in more ways than one, but worse because she knew she would do it again if she could, to ease Gabriel’s sorrow and rage for a little while.

  Gabriel’s pain shouldn’t have bothered her. She shouldn’t have risked his safety for something so unimportant as his feelings.

  So why did she do it anyway?

  Because his suffering made her hurt. Just like his smile made her want to smile, and his sadness made her want to shed tears enough to wash the pain away.

  She couldn’t understand it, just had to hope no one else had been waiting and listening for—

  “That was quite a touching performance, Amelia. Almost brought tears to my eyes.”

  She jerked her head up to find Donato lurking in the shadows at the other end of the room. He bore no weapon and wore no protection, but she didn’t trust him for a minute. In a flash of light, she was on guard, dressed in her armor, sword in hand.

  He sneered at the sight of her blade. The same blade she had used to cut down his pathetic attempt at rebellion before stripping his emotions during the last rogue uprising so many years ago. By then her race had already been at war with each other for an eternity. And when the Archangels final
ly prevailed, Amelia had been chosen to be the instrument of their enforcement. She had systematically hunted down the last of the rogues and forced them to bend before Michael until every last angel was just like her—soulless.

  From that point forward, emotion was forbidden to angels. Donato’s would still be locked away from him, too, if he had stayed safely within the boundaries of the angel realms like he was supposed to.

  He stepped forward, hands out at his sides to show that he was helpless against her. He’d dressed casually, as so many of the humans did, in faded denim and a black T-shirt. A heavy, dark scruff shadowed his jaw. “Now, now. There’s no call for violence,” he said. “At least not here, not today. I haven’t come for your prodigious human just yet.”

  Amelia brought her sword up, her fingers loose and sure around its familiar grip. “Because you know it’s going to take a lot more than anything you’ve got to get through me.”

  He cocked his head. “And have you been here protecting the man all this time?”

  “I do my duty, Donato,” she spat. “You don’t seem to remember what that means.”

  “Oh, but I do remember. I remember quite a lot of things, actually. I remember the stalwart avenger of the Archangels being recruited from one of our own.” He looked her up and down, retreating a step as Amelia came forward. He still refused to conjure a sword of his own to defend himself with. His focused stare glittered from the shadows, cold crystal orbs that stung.

  “I remember an angel who betrayed her own kind,” he continued. “Who killed her own kind. Oh yes, I remember that very well. The Archangels don’t deserve your fealty, Amelia. And neither does this particularly flawed human.”

  She circled Donato slowly, keeping a wide and cautious berth.

  He followed her movements almost negligently as she rounded behind him. “How long have you been without angel song now? How many days? Is it worth it?” he asked. “Is he worth it? Can’t you sense this realm seeping into you already? Weakening you? How does it feel? Are those dirty, messy emotions choking you yet?”

  “What is it you want?”