“I don’t feel so good.” A sluggish recollection crawled across her mind of violet lightning that had suddenly appeared in front of her.
He muttered under his breath in that same strange language he’d used before. “You’d better sit down.” He took her arm and propelled her sideways and her brain finally reconnected with her vision.
“What the fuck?” Her heart kicked against her ribs in sudden panic as she stared, uncomprehending, at the smooth stone floor. Where were the faded, antiquated rugs that had been in her family for countless generations?
“Just sit down before you fall down.” He pushed her, none too gently, onto a timber chair.
She sat, but only because her legs threatened to buckle. She gripped the sides of the chair and risked glancing up. They were in a kitchen, but it wasn’t her kitchen. It was large, square and constructed of polished stone, and through the vast expanse of glass windows was a lush forest.
Her stomach heaved and she clamped her teeth together before finally looking in his direction.
His arms were folded and he was glaring at her as if this was all her fault. A shiver raced over her arms, cooling the sweat, increasing the nausea. Was this all her fault? And what, in any case, was all this?
Her chest tightened and it became hard to draw in a breath. She knew on some fundamental level she was in danger of tumbling into severe shock but couldn’t seem to get a grip. Because there was nothing to grip on to. Because none of this made sense.
“Drink.” It was a harsh command and she was aware of a strong hand holding the back of her head and a crystal glass pushed against her lips. Sparkling cold water trickled down her throat and she saw rainbows dance across the ceiling as sunlight caught the crystal facets of the glass.
She choked, pushed his arm away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Either she was in the middle of the most lucid dream she’d ever experienced or this was really happening. And although she much preferred the dream scenario she had a terrible feeling this was anything but.
“What did you do?” She wanted to sound tough, but her voice wobbled. “How did I get here? Did you pull me through the astral planes?” He must have done. Although how he’d managed such a thing she couldn’t imagine. Besides, why couldn’t she remember the journey? And why had she felt as if every atom of her body had shivered on the edge of destruction?
He placed the glass on the stone workbench with great precision, and she got the impression that in reality he would love nothing better than to shatter both. Then he looked at her as if he’d never even heard of the astral planes, much less actually ascended to them.
“The astral planes?” His tone confirmed his expression. “Of course I didn’t. This is where I live.”
Aurora risked another glance around the kitchen and the forest skimmed her peripheral vision. Should she assume they were now in America? If so, they certainly weren’t in Manhattan.
She wasn’t going to panic. There was probably a very simple explanation for her current situation and it had nothing to do with her having lost her mind.
So he hadn’t pulled her through the astral planes. But somehow he had transported her from Ireland. She knew it wasn’t impossible. Her own mother had once done a similar thing on the night she’d walked into her father’s arms. But they’d had a prior psychic connection, years of shared dreams and linked visions. They were already, in many ways, irrevocably entwined together.
And, of course, her mother hadn’t physically traveled miles across the world. She had merely taken one step that had propelled her from her own dimension into this one.
Aurora had grown up with that knowledge. It was familiar, no matter how improbable anyone else might think it. But the thought of being catapulted halfway around the world within a couple of seconds was seriously . . . terrifying.
She struggled against the overwhelming urge to curl into a ball and close her eyes. Denial wasn’t going to make any of this go away. Information, after all, was power.
“Yes, but how did we actually get here?” Did she really want to know?
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer her. Then he exhaled an impatient breath. Anyone would think he found her questions completely unnecessary.
“Teleportation.” He sounded deadly serious and her instinctive response to scoff shriveled in her throat. “Your body dematerialized in Ireland and instantaneously rematerialized here. But don’t worry. It’s unlikely you mislaid any vital fragments en route.”
Teleportation? Was that how he’d landed on top of her today?
“And where exactly is your home?” Was that really her voice? She sounded eerily calm. He’d never guess how close she was to sliding off the chair and hiding under the table.
“Somewhere you’d have no hope of finding on any godsforsaken maps of your world.” He sounded like that fact gave him a great deal of grim pleasure.
She wiped her sweaty palms on her shorts and tried to ignore the erratic pounding of her heart. She wasn’t going to fall apart. That wouldn’t clarify her current situation or help her get back home.
“And why,” she said, as if she was perfectly used to teleporting as a means of transportation, “did you do that?”
Gabe stared at Aurora as disbelief crawled along his spine. Why wasn’t she incoherent with fear? He’d just teleported her thousands of miles across the ocean and she was acting as if they’d just strolled across the street.
He wasn’t sure why her serene attitude irked him, but it did.
“Because.” His voice was savage. “I had the crazy urge to save your ass.”
Her eyes glazed as if she was trying to make sense of his remark. “Save my ass?” She sounded confused but before he could enlighten her any further, her eyes widened in sudden recollection. “From that violet lightning, you mean?”
And still she kept on with the questions. He couldn’t recall the last time a mortal had fired so many questions at him without his express permission. Did she still have no idea with whom she was dealing?
“From the Guardians.” His revulsion for the creatures soaked every word, but Aurora’s expression didn’t alter. She clearly didn’t have a clue who the Guardians were. “That violet lightning as you call it is their method of transportation between their world and this.”
By rights Aurora should now gasp in shock and perhaps collapse onto her knees and grovel at his feet. He’d know what to do with her then. Sweep her into his arms, comfort her and screw her senseless.
And once that was done the burn in his blood would subside and he could work out, in a cold, logical manner, what he was going to do with her. Instead of which every time he looked at her all he could imagine was how she would feel and how she would taste as she wrapped her legs around him.
Her lips parted in obvious shock. She was in the perfect position to take him into her mouth. The realization he couldn’t stop thinking about sex, even when he’d just broken one of the oldest protocols by rescuing her, caused his mood to degenerate further.
“You mean,” she said, sounding torn between fascination and disbelief, “they come from another dimension?”
She was asking all the wrong questions. She was indigenous to Earth and so far they hadn’t attained the technology to do anything more than a tentative prod beyond their own solar system. They had no conception of the life that seethed in the universe and would certainly burst a collective artery if they ever discovered their world was a popular destination for degenerates who enjoyed sporting with primitives.
As a species they certainly weren’t ready to discover what archaic creatures survived in the vast expanses of space between galaxies. The merciless Guardians, who had retreated into the inhospitable Dark Matter and created their immense domains, aka the Voids, countless millennia ago. “Of course they don’t come from another dimension.” What had given her that idea? “Trust me. You don’t want to fall into their clutches.”
For a moment she looked as if she was about to fi
nally succumb to delayed terror and pass out. But then she gripped her fingers together and although he didn’t want to feel anything but irritation at his rash rescue, reluctant admiration for her sheer force of will uncoiled in his chest.
“Don’t worry.” At least he could reassure her on one thing. “They can’t get to you here. It’s physically impossible for them to penetrate my island.”
Instead of appearing soothed, Aurora’s eyes flashed with fear and she stiffened in the chair as if he’d just delivered devastating news. “They wanted me?” She sounded horrified, and he realized that hadn’t occurred to her until now. Shit. By attempting to reassure her he’d only managed to panic her further. “But why?”
Ancient images flashed through his brain, meshed with ageless rumor and eternal speculation. He could tell her exactly what the Guardians wanted her for. They would drag her to their torture chambers and subject her to any number of their so-called experiments. And as for the why . . .
He discovered he couldn’t do it. Why frighten her more than she was already? Just because he didn’t normally care about shredding a mortal’s frail sensibilities when it suited him was neither here nor there.
Aurora had tried to save him from the Guardians, even though she hadn’t known what they were. Even if her attempts were feeble in the extreme and doomed to dismal failure, it didn’t change the fact she had tried.
Why hadn’t he left her the second he’d discovered she was indigenous to Earth? Then he wouldn’t be in the middle of this messy moral dilemma that rocked his necrotic soul.
He didn’t do soul searching. He didn’t do charity work. And he wasn’t about to start now.
But still he couldn’t tell her the full truth.
“How should I know? They enjoy abducting mortals and . . . playing with them.”
She stared at him as if he was her worst nightmare and he had the unbelievable urge to drop his gaze. As if he was somehow in the wrong. When all he’d done was save her from a fate more horrific than her mind could comprehend.
“Mortals?” There was an unmistakable wobble in her voice. “Are you trying to tell me that the Guardians aren’t even human?”
“Human?” If her question hadn’t been so naively pathetic he would have laughed. Except he couldn’t laugh, not when she continued to gaze at him with those enchantingly innocent blue eyes. Because her ignorance wasn’t amusing. It was terrifying. “No. They’re not human.”
What little color that remained in her cheeks faded. It was painfully obvious that until this moment the conception of alien life had never truly registered.
“But why did they come after me? Is it because of something I did?” She sounded horrified. Did she really believe she was capable of doing anything to invoke the legal strictures of the Guardians?
“Doubtful.” Make that impossible. No way could Aurora have done anything to warrant the Guardians unleashing their own brand of justice on her.
“So it was just totally random that they appeared today?” He caught a faint hint of desperation in her voice, as if despite his reassurance she still harbored the suspicion that she was responsible for the Guardians’ arrival.
“The Guardians,” he said, even as a section of his mind demanded to know why he was indulging Aurora by answering her incessant questions, “are totally random bastards. They would have turned up today whatever you were or weren’t doing.”
That was true enough. And then a thought stabbed through his brain. Had their appearance in Aurora’s life anything to do with him and Mephisto?
The possibility gnawed. It was unlikely. Through longstanding mutual animosity and ancient protocols, archangels and the Guardians avoided each other’s presence. But if Mephisto’s interference had in some incomprehensible way exposed Aurora to the Guardians’ attention then he was doubly justified in snatching her from their fetid jaws.
“How do you know that?”
“What?” He frowned at her, his mind still working on the possibility his inexplicable arrival in Aurora’s life was somehow connected to the Guardians’ appearance. Although he was certain there was no connection, a fragment of doubt refused to die. And with the doubt came, of all things, guilt.
Over a human.
“How do you know so much about them? I’ve never even heard of them.”
Irritation spiked and he welcomed it, nurtured it, because it helped to slaughter the despicable tendrils of guilt that insisted on weaving through his brain. Didn’t she ever shut up? Why wasn’t his word that she needed to be saved from the Guardians enough for her?
He’d done nothing but answer her incessant questions since the moment they had met. He, the Archangel Gabriel, who answered to no one.
The silence screeched between them. Her fingers fidgeted, she crossed and uncrossed her ankles and a couple of times the tip of her tongue peeked between her lips.
He realized he was staring at her lips. Waiting for the third time.
Fuck. He didn’t do waiting. Not when it came to women and sex. And he’d be damned if he’d wait much longer for Aurora. She’d wanted him from the second they’d met. The sooner he had her, the sooner he’d be able to turn his mind to sorting out this mess.
“Okay.” She shot him an odd look, as if finally realizing he no longer intended to satisfy her insatiable curiosity. He drew in a deep breath. The situation wouldn’t be intolerable. Now she understood the need to hold her tongue. “So who are you, exactly?”
Or not. Briefly he considered ignoring her question, as he had ignored her previous question, but guilt still crouched in a dark corner of his mind and it galled. She wanted the truth? He’d give her the truth.
“Your savior.” Each word dripped with derision. Not that he expected Aurora to appreciate the irony of his comment. When was the last time he’d been anyone’s savior without a hefty price tag attached for his services?
For a moment she just continued to stare at him and he narrowed his eyes, daring her to pass comment on his remark. The silence extended, fraught with words unsaid, and his taut muscles began to relax. This uncomfortable arrangement would work, so long as she didn’t keep firing endless questions his way. Then she blinked, breaking eye contact, and pushed herself to her feet.
“And how long do you think I’ll need to stay here before it’s safe to go back?”
“Go back?” After everything he’d just told her, her first thought was how soon she could go back?
“Yes.” She flattened one hand on the table, as if she still needed support. “I mean, do you think the Guardians have gone now? Is it safe for me to go home yet?”
He had no idea how long the Guardians would wait for her. It depended how much they wanted her. One thing was for sure though. They’d be mad as hell that an archangel had snatched their prey from right under their nonexistent noses.
That alone could make them more tenacious in their desire for this particular human.
Curse the gods. This was his sanctuary, his bolthole, the headquarters for his black ops ventures. He’d never brought a mortal here. The thought had never crossed his mind. But because of one unguarded second Aurora Robinson was not only here—she could well be here for weeks.
It was a nightmarish prospect. There was a world of difference between sharing a few pleasurable hours with a desirable female and having that female intrude into his personal existence. Especially when she did nothing with her mouth but talk.
And he had no one but himself to blame.
But instead of thanking him, instead of showing due gratitude for the great sacrifice he was making to ensure her continued safety, all Aurora wanted to know was how soon she could leave.
It was obvious she had no intention of shutting up. He’d seduce her and exhaust her so thoroughly her brain would require all its power to maintain basic life functions. She’d have no energy left to think of questioning him again.
“Try and understand.” The words were as much for his benefit as hers. Hammering home the full implication
of his unthinking action. “You’re not going back, Aurora. You’re here until I deem it safe for you to return to your life.”
Chapter Seven
AURORA stared up at him, maintaining eye contact. She would not allow panic to distract her. She was not losing her mind.
“And when might that be?” All things considered she sounded amazingly calm. They might have been discussing the local train timetable.
Once again he didn’t answer her. But the heat of his gaze seared her skin and her uneven breath had nothing to do with her current situation and everything to do with the sinfully sexy bastard in front of her.
Because he was being a total bastard. Why was he acting as if she had no right to ask where she was? And even when he answered her it was as if he was doing her a huge favor.
Maybe he’d made all that stuff up about the Guardians. How did he know so much about them? But even as the thought slid into her mind, it refused to take hold. Because in her gut she believed every word he’d said.
“Is there some way of finding out how long the Guardians will hang around?” No way did she want to return if they—whatever exactly they were—were still waiting for her. But surely they wouldn’t wait for long.
Would they?
One thing was for sure. She couldn’t stay here indefinitely. Her mother needed daily contact with her—by phone, email or text, anything. And if she didn’t go and visit at least every other weekend, her mum’s confusion magnified. Her dad said she was her mum’s touchstone, her last tenuous link to reality. If Aurora disappeared without a word how would that affect her mother? She didn’t even want to imagine.
There had to be another way of avoiding the Guardians.
She stepped toward him and caught a flash of satisfaction in his eyes, as if finally she was doing something of which he approved. Her glance skated over his chest and, as if drawn by an invisible thread, tugged lower.
God. He was becoming aroused again. And she couldn’t tear her fascinated gaze away as the silk tented through his unbuttoned jeans with provocative invitation.
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