“Do you want me to call the—” Hell, who exactly should she call in this kind of situation? There was no emergency service she knew of that dealt with whatever had occurred this morning. “Anyone?” she added, sounding completely lame.
His jaw tensed. Aurora pulled her iPhone from her shorts pocket, unlocked it and slid it across the grass to him.
“Maybe you’d rather call someone yourself?” The U.S. Embassy, perhaps?
“Go away.” It was an autocratic command, as if he was used to issuing them and having them instantly obeyed. She didn’t blame him for being pissed. She’d probably be exactly the same if their positions were reversed. Except there wasn’t any need for him to be such an arse with her. It wasn’t as if any of this was her fault.
Was it?
No. Definitely not. Whatever had happened to shake the astral planes had nothing to do with her. Since she’d turned eighteen, two years after her mum had begun to forget her past, Aurora’s insubstantial desire to do something had gradually grown and solidified into an unshakeable quest. For the last eight years she’d researched meticulously and combined with her studies in biomedical science had concluded she stood a good chance of success. After all, it wasn’t as if she was trying to access a purely theoretical world. Half of her DNA actually originated from that world.
“Well, I can’t go away.” She hoped she sounded calm and reasonable. “I’m staying here this weekend. This land belongs to my parents.” There was no point becoming offended by his sudden display of arrogance. Or of allowing the insistent whisper in the back of her mind that this was all completely insane to gain the upper hand. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe she needed to take control of the situation instead of salivating over him like a complete nympho. “Would you like to come up to the house?”
He exhaled. Slowly, loudly and with the obvious intention of letting her know just how irritated he was. Without meaning to her glance slid to his crotch. He was still as aroused as ever. She really was a sad pervert.
“It’s over. I’m not interested.”
Despite her best intentions she couldn’t resist another illicit glance. It was obvious that while his brain might want to pretend disinterest, judging by the bulge in his pants his cock had other ideas. Had she really thought that? So much for her attempts to take control of the situation. She bit her lip to stop herself from giggling. At least she hadn’t said it out loud.
“I only meant if you wanted a cup of tea or—or something.”
Gabe slid his arm over his forehead and glowered at the woman sitting cross-legged by his side. Her eyes were too bright, her cheeks were flushed and she had a half-smile on her face as if she found the situation hilarious.
Would she still find it hilarious if he pinned her to the ground, ripped off her clothes and fucked her so hard her brains ignited?
“I don’t drink tea.” He injected as much disgust into the words as he could. There was only one type of women he avoided. And they were the ones indigenous to Earth.
“Okay. I think we have whiskey, if you prefer.”
For a second he just stared at her in disbelief. Why was she still sitting there, annoying him? He’d dismissed her three times. And she appeared not to realize. He shoved himself upright, ignored the unfulfilled throb between his thighs and caught sight of the cell phone she’d slid across the grass to him.
It was just an ordinary piece of human technology. Nothing special about it. He had a couple of cell phones himself. Yet he picked it up.
Lightning flashed through his arm, an electrical surge of energy that owed nothing to human engineers. And with the burning came the unmistakable image of Mephisto.
His grip tightened as disbelief hammered in his brain. What was this woman doing with something Mephisto had tampered with?
As if the contact had jarred his brain into gear, fragments of memory returned to him. Back at the club. He and Mephisto had got no further than planning their night’s entertainment with those four willing females. Instead, Mephisto had pulled a bleeping iPhone from his pocket and scrutinized the screen.
And then, without a word of explanation, he’d teleported.
Gabe gritted his teeth. He vaguely recalled swallowing another tankard of brain-rot and then two of the quartet had lured him into a darkened nook. He remembered them feverishly pulling off his shirt, their gasps as they trailed their fingers over his chest—and then nothing else pushed through the impenetrable fog clouding his mind. That must’ve been the moment he’d blacked out.
And ended up here.
—
MEPHISTO, RENDERED INVISIBLE to the mortal realm by so many glamours his head ached, inched stealthily along the branch of the oak so he wouldn’t miss a word of Gabe’s response.
He couldn’t imagine why Gabe wasn’t enjoying those four girls they’d picked up. How the hell had he suddenly appeared from nowhere? It was as if he had literally fallen from the sky. Whatever, he was the reason Mephisto was now choking on fucking glamours and hiding in a tree. The last thing he wanted was for the other archangel to catch a whiff of his presence in the troposphere.
Just moments ago Mephisto had been enjoying a front-row seat, right next to the oblivious Aurora as she entered the astral planes and attempted her insane experiment.
Of course he hadn’t expected her to succeed. But still he’d turned up to watch the show. And the crazy bitch had opened a rift.
It wasn’t often—make that never—that a mere mortal managed to stun him. But his hunch two years ago that this human would provide excellent entertainment at some point had paid off.
He’d first stumbled across her in London as she was leaving a college dedicated to psychic studies. Such places held a morbid fascination for him. He wasn’t sure why, since the abilities of even the most psychically advanced humans was pitiful.
But for some reason, despite her not being his type or doing anything for his libido, he’d given her a second glance. And then he’d caught sight of the notes she was scribbling in her notebook as she leaned against the wall and was instantly intrigued.
They were not the normal observations of a student studying advanced trance and channeling. She appeared to be putting her own unique spin on it all and his curiosity roused.
So he’d tapped into her cell phone—a stroke of genius in his opinion—that meant he could monitor her psychic fluctuations without exerting any unnecessary energy. And although he hadn’t imagined for one second she’d get anywhere with her lofty plans to flout the laws of nature, her single-minded determination and bizarre convictions kept him hooked.
But before she could do anything else the astral planes began to tumble. He’d catapulted back into his physical body, settled back to watch the inevitable fallout—and instead had been nearly flattened by the improbable arrival of Gabe. From nowhere.
Unfortunately he didn’t have the time to hang around and watch the finale. Aurora’s inevitable fate he knew already. He was no longer interested in her. It was Gabe who now intrigued him. Because it was obvious the other archangel hadn’t arrived voluntarily and who the hell possessed the power to transport an archangel against their will or knowledge?
Chapter Four
GABE tossed the phone back at the woman who caught it one-handed. He might still not be able to remember anything, but things were finally falling into place.
This was Mephisto’s idea of a joke. And when Gabe caught up with him he was going to rip off his wings. Feather by fucking feather. Just because Mephisto was the oldest archangel in existence, the favorite of their bitch of a goddess and outranked any other archangel didn’t give him the right to mess with Gabe.
He had no idea how the bastard had managed to knock him out and transport him here or even the point of the whole thing but he had a more pressing question right now.
“How long have you known Mephisto?”
Her eyes widened in apparent bemusement, as if his sudden change in topic had thrown her.
“I
don’t know anyone called Mephisto.” She sounded so damn convincing he wanted to reach inside her mind and throttle her thought processes. Yet for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he believed her. “Look, do you want me to take you to the hospital? Just so they can check that you don’t have a concussion or something?”
With monumental effort he clawed through his mind, trying to recall the blank moments between seeing Mephisto vanish, and him waking up here. On top of this damn female and with an excruciating hard-on. Arousal was flooding every cell of his body as if he’d been nanoseconds from orgasm. And despite the last few minutes, he still had a hard-on of massive inconvenience.
Concussion wasn’t the first word that sprang to mind.
“Do you have any idea?” he said, giving her a glare that in the past had caused mortals to collapse in terror. This infuriating female merely stared right back, as if mesmerized. For a split second he lost his train of thought. “Any idea how dangerous it is to become involved in things you know nothing about?”
Instead of wilting beneath his condemnation she stiffened, as if she took offense at his tone.
“I happen to know a great deal about it. More than you appear to, anyway.”
He was so astounded that she was not only answering a rhetorical question, but contradicting him in the process, that he just sat there in silence as she continued to berate him. “Didn’t you feel those weird vibrations? Don’t you think that had something to do with all this?”
The words weird vibrations caused an eerie shudder of resonance along his spine but he ignored it. This primitive creature, who continued to pretend ignorance of his elevated status, was arguing with him.
His patience—not one of his few virtues in the first place—unraveled. If she refused to tell him what he wanted to know he’d find out by himself. With only a minimum amount of effort as befit her lowly perch on the evolutionary chain, he scanned the outer edges of her mind.
Instantly, psychic fire jabbed into his brain, so unexpected he recoiled. She had rebuffed him. It wasn’t possible that she’d been aware of his intrusion. It had been so superficial as to be virtually nonexistent.
All of which was irrelevant. Her mind had not only refused him entry, but it had actively fought back.
“What did you just do?” Her tone was accusing but there was a thread of sheer astonishment in her voice, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own question. “Did you try and get inside my mind?”
How did she know? Even the most psychically advanced humans were oblivious. It was only the primarily telepathic races that should’ve been able to pick up on such a mild scan.
He maintained eye contact, his irritation over the current situation fading into a reluctant fascination. “Do you have anything of interest inside your mind?”
Her lips parted in obvious disbelief that he hadn’t instantly refuted her accusation. “I don’t think that’s really the point, is it?” she said, gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.
On the more civilized worlds uninvited psychic scanning was considered morally reprehensible. Since that ruled out the vast majority of planets in the universe, Gabe had never before been confronted by an irate victim.
Normally, they either had no idea of his intrusion or, in the cases where he really dug in deep, they were in no state to confront anything by the time he’d finished with them.
Briefly he considered a deeper penetration of this woman’s mind. And then discarded it. Even a minor incursion could be fatal given the mental barriers she had in place. How had she managed to erect such a thing? Her protection would need years of training to perfect.
Which begged the question: Who had taught her?
And, probably more important, why?
“There must be something worth knowing inside your head.” He was faintly shocked to realize he meant the words. He could barely recall the last time he’d been interested in what went on inside the skull of a female he wanted sexually. “Otherwise why bother with such a sophisticated defense system?”
Aurora realized her jaw was in danger of dropping yet again, and clenched her teeth as a preemptive measure. It was bad enough she hadn’t imagined that sensual, silken touch on the outer edges of her mind. For a second she’d been so stunned by the contact she hadn’t grasped its significance. Because, despite all the research she’d conducted and people she’d met over the last few years, not one of them had possessed the kind of telepathic ability she had inherited from her mother.
She had never shared such an intimate link with anyone but her mum. She had no idea how such a link would even feel with anyone else. And yet on a primal level her shocked suspicion had been absolute.
He had attempted to invade her mind.
Not that it made any difference. Psychic or not, he still had no idea how he’d ended up here.
With difficulty she relaxed her death grip on her cell phone and tried to make sense of his last obscure remark. Defense system?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. It was a horrible cliché and the look on his face suggested he thought so too. “Just don’t do it again, that’s all.”
His lips thinned, and for a moment she had the strangest compunction to apologize. After all, she had just insulted him. And she had no right questioning him really, did she?
Because he was . . . in the right.
The thought hovered in her mind, heavy and insistent. She frowned, felt her lips slowly part, felt the words forming on her tongue.
But she wasn’t sorry. She hadn’t insulted him. He might look like every girl’s wet fantasy but that didn’t give him the right to go around probing inside their minds.
At least, not in her mind.
She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue and the ridiculous urge to beg his forgiveness dissolved. If she didn’t know better she’d think he was planting those thoughts in her head. Except she knew he wasn’t because she couldn’t feel his intrusion the way she had felt him before.
“You were saying?” His voice was low, smoky and wrapped around her in a sensual caress. His eyes enslaved her, beguiling her into their magical depths. The lust she had managed to dampen down once again surged through her veins.
He was gorgeous. He knew it and had no compunction in using it to his advantage. She hitched in a deep breath, tore her gaze from his and glared at her clenched hands. To her relief the hypnotic imperative to plaster her body against him and offer herself like a sacrificial slave crawled back into the depraved depths of her libido.
His sexual pull was frightening. Lethal. His past was probably littered with broken hearts and broken promises and if she didn’t get rid of him soon she’d willingly be his next conquest.
She almost had been his next conquest. She couldn’t quite figure out whether she was sorry or relieved she’d pulled back earlier. But no matter how much she still fancied him, the moment for mindless gratification had passed.
So long as she didn’t look back into his eyes.
“I think we should go back to the house.” She kept her gaze on her hands. “Then we can make plans on how you can get home.”
He didn’t reply. Didn’t move. Eventually she couldn’t stand it any longer and risked looking up at him. There was an odd expression on his face, as if he was attempting to process her words and finding it beyond him.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine there was much he found beyond his capabilities.
Still he didn’t respond. The silence stretched between them, taut and strangely brittle, as if the slightest wrong word might shatter the pervading peace.
“Don’t you think so?” She tried to ignore it, but his silence was unnerving.
“I think,” he said, looking at her as if she was a particularly exotic beetle he’d discovered crawling over his foot, “I could do with that whiskey.”
“Right.” Aurora refused to be insulted by the expression on his face. “Good idea.” She could definitely do with a stiff drink or three, that was
for sure. She grabbed the framed flower, pushed herself upright and mentally winced when her knees began to shake. She hoped he didn’t notice. “Come on then.”
He shot her a look that suggested he wasn’t used to people telling him what to do. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to move, but then he expelled a pained breath and stood in a sensuous, graceful movement without needing to brace his weight on his hands at all.
Desire curled deep in her belly. Standing, she could admire his sculpted pecs and taut abdomen to their best advantage. As if fully aware of her furtive scrutiny he stretched, panther-like, biceps flexing as he linked his hands over his head. Dark gold hair dusted his chest, arrowing toward his unzipped jeans, and Aurora swallowed a groan of pure unadulterated lust.
He could probably taste the sexually charged pheromones radiating from her deprived body. But even that mortifying thought wasn’t enough to stop her visual feasting.
The corner of his mouth quirked, as if he was fully aware of her regard, and he rolled his shoulders, muscles bunching and relaxing as if he was deliberately trying to tempt her.
Mindless gratification hovered on her immediate horizon, assuring her the moment could too easily be recaptured, and it was more than tempting. Mesmerized by the allure of his body she watched, helpless to tear her gaze away, as he turned to face the woodland that bordered the property.
Her ravenous gaze licked over his powerful shoulders and froze, unbelieving. Two deep gashes ran from his shoulder blades down the length of his back. Her breath stalled in her throat, unnoticed. Good god, what the hell had happened to him?
It looked as if an acid-drenched axe had sliced through to the bone, eating the flesh, distorting the muscle. Although the wounds were now healed and looked ancient, the passage of time hadn’t disguised how horrific the injuries must have been, or how agonizing.
Slowly he turned toward her, and despite how she tried to hide it she knew the shock ricocheting through her blood was clearly reflected on her face.
He caught her gaze, held it and she watched his mesmeric eyes darken with comprehension. And then he took one stride toward her.
Archangel of Mercy Page 3