Archangel of Mercy

by Christina Ashcroft

  Her uninhibited response to Gabe’s brutal seduction infuriated her pride, but she’d deal with that later. Right now she had to convince this arrogant archangel that he needed to intercede with the Guardians on her behalf.

  She tried to avert her gaze as Gabe shoved his erection back into his pants. Just looking at it caused renewed tremors to flutter in her womb. He’d thrust so deep and hard, taken her with such force and disregard she’d wanted to kill him. Except coherent thought had fled within a second as her body ignited into a million fiery whirlpools. She might want to delude herself the sex had been mediocre, but she had the horrible suspicion he was as aware as she was that it had damn well nearly incinerated her sanity. She tensed her sore muscles in a pathetic attempt to reassert control. And only managed to stoke the glowing embers higher.

  “Now you do know.” He sounded rabid as he attempted to close his pants. That had to hurt. She hoped it did. Only a goddamn fuck? Get it out of their system? What did he think she was, a space whore?

  The thought punched through her mind with numbing implication, and finally she managed to drag her gaze up from his crotch to his face. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth grim, and a palpable sense of dark menace pulsed in the air between them. Yet still her heart jolted in her chest. Because despite how much she hated this entire situation she still wanted him.

  “What about god?” Make that God with a capital G. “Couldn’t he help?” The words rushed from her as he lurched to his feet in an oddly ungraceful manner. Probably because he’d drank too much. Bastard. Not that it had affected his performance so far as she could see.

  “Which god are you thinking of?” He glowered down at her from a great height, and it was easy to imagine he himself was an ancient god of Greek myth. “I’ll see if he’s available for a consultation.” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable.

  Gritting her teeth against her abused muscles, she pushed herself up and tried not to stagger on the spindly heels. Belatedly, she remembered the disgusting state of her attire and although it was a redundant gesture, given their recent encounter, she once again wrapped her arms around her exposed breasts.

  “Your god.” Considering she now had no option but to believe in angels, she supposed it wasn’t that much of a stretch to accept the existence of countless gods, either. Maybe there really were unicorns, too.

  “My goddess,” Gabe said with obvious satisfaction, “would crush you to dust before lowering herself to listen to your complaints.”

  Goddess. Right. An odd rushing noise filled her ears, and her head felt oddly light like she’d had too much whiskey.

  “What about a holy tribunal? Court of Appeal?” She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but the room spun and still Gabe looked strangely fuzzy around the edges. “Don’t I even get a fair trial?”

  “There’s nothing fair about it. What gave you that idea?”

  A phantom fist tightened around her heart.

  “But you’re an archangel. You stand at the left hand of God.” Panic hitched higher. “Goddess.” Somehow it didn’t sound the same, but what did specifics matter if it got the job done? “I mean, your goddess is the highest power, right?”

  He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. “She’s always liked to think so.” His tone suggested he didn’t share that view. In fact, he sounded as if he didn’t think much of her at all.

  That couldn’t be right. Even if it was a goddess and not a god who’d created the angels, surely the rest of the legends—ancient history—hadn’t got it all wrong? Weren’t angels supposed to adore their Maker? Do anything for him—or her?

  Terror made her reckless. She stepped forward, curled her hand around his biceps and peered up at him. There was nothing soft or gentle in the glare he arrowed back at her. No hint of empathy for her plight or indication he even gave a damn.

  But he’d saved her once. She had to remember that. Had to try and appeal to his sense of honor no matter how hard it was to admit to herself that he possessed such a thing.

  “Could you plead my case with her? If you tell her the reasons why, I’m sure she’d—”

  “Throw you to the Guardians herself. Yes, she would.” He gripped her shoulders and gave her a shake that was so unexpected she clutched wildly at him before she fell off her hated heels. “Get this in your head, Aurora. I haven’t seen her for millennia. And if I ever come face-to-face with the bitch again, the last thing I plan on doing is appealing to her nonexistent compassionate nature.”

  Two things slammed into her panicking brain. Gabe wasn’t going to help her. And he was thousands of years old.

  He was an archangel. He was an immortal. She’d already faced that. But she hadn’t really considered it. Hadn’t comprehended just how ancient he truly was. And even now she struggled to comprehend because he looked like a human—hot as hell, for sure, but still a human—and far from looking like a legend from antiquity he looked as if he’d yet to celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

  Her eyes stung and she blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the violet streaks that invaded her vision. But like the aftereffects of a camera flash they remained imprinted on her eyelids.

  She widened her eyes as she realized she wasn’t hallucinating. The violet lightning splintered directly behind Gabe’s head, and long silvery fingers pushed through the fracture. The Guardians.

  Time froze as the violet shard expanded as if it were a door that had been violently flung open. Even as her fingers instinctively clutched Gabe’s arms, a small gray alien with a huge dome head and reflective almond eyes stepped through the chasm.

  An alien. The Guardians were gray aliens.

  Gabe stiffened, glanced over his shoulder and hissed words in that ancient language he favored. Before she had time to even suck in a second petrified breath, he wrapped his arms around her and the seedy bathroom vanished as he teleported them out of there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  AURORA reeled and only the fact Gabe’s arms still crushed her shoulder blades prevented her from toppling off her stilettos. Slowly he loosened his grip and she stumbled backward, livid to realize they were back in his bedroom.

  “Don’t touch me.” She flapped her hand at him even though he hadn’t moved toward her. “I’d rather kill you than have sex with you again.” Gray aliens were real; and they were more than anyone had ever imagined.

  “Now that,” Gabe said, his gaze drilling into her like kaleidoscopic lasers, “is something I’d like to see.”

  She had the feeling he was mocking her, But what did that matter after what she’d just found out?

  “The Guardians . . .” The words tangled on her tongue because they conjured up something warrior-like, magnificent—even if they were the bad guys. She’d never seen or imagined anything less Guardian-like in her life. “Why didn’t you tell me what they really were?” The panic slammed against her chest. Or was that her heart? “They’re not even human.”

  “I told you they weren’t human.” He sounded infuriatingly calm. “I’m not human, either.”

  “You look human.” Even as she shot the words at him she knew her logic was badly flawed. But she didn’t care. Gabe might be an archangel but he looked like a man. She could talk to him, reason with him and argue with him. For the life of her she couldn’t imagine doing any of those things with the Guardians.

  And wasn’t that what Gabe had been telling her all along?

  “Only,” Gabe said, “superficially.”

  In this case, superficially worked for her. “They’re aliens.” But even saying the word aloud didn’t lessen the disbelief. Bemused, she watched Gabe begin to undo the buttons of his shirt. Why was he taking off his shirt? For some inane reason, flashes of old fifties sci-fi movies tumbled through her mind. “Don’t they have flying saucers?”

  “A quaint misconception.” She stared in fascinated disbelief as he tossed his shirt across the floor, exposing his magnificent torso. “They’ve never needed that kind of technology. We assume the energy they h
arvest from the Dark Matter they inhabit provides them with their version of teleportation.”

  She’d read up on Dark Matter during her research but it was more a case of what science concluded it wasn’t, rather than reliable data of what it was.

  Probably just as well. How would people react if they discovered the universe was policed by gray aliens that lived in vast expanses of mysterious dark space that even, by the sound of it, archangels didn’t fully understand?

  A scary urge to giggle bubbled inside her chest. The Twilight Zone was real, and she was right in the middle of it. “So that violet lightning. That’s just—what?”

  “Think of it as an interstellar elevator.” He ran a leisurely glance from the top of her head to her aching feet. It was blatantly sexual, and with a jolt she remembered the slutty outfit she wore that exposed more than it concealed. “Except when you enter the fracture you arrive at your destination instantaneously.”

  A shudder crawled along her spine. Twice she’d looked into that fracture. Twice she’d escaped. Within the space of a couple of days she’d breached dimensions, hooked up with an archangel, met a demon and traveled by teleportation. But the knowledge that gray aliens existed threatened to tip her over the edge. “I— You—” She didn’t know what she wanted to say but it didn’t matter, because her brain refused to engage with her tongue in any case. She pressed her hands against her chest, as if that might help slow her galloping heart.

  “I know. You’d rather kill me than have sex with me.”

  “What?” Distracted by his bizarre comment the terror of the Guardians receded. “Why would I want to kill you?”

  “Beats me.” The smile he leveled her way sizzled with sin. She forgot how to breathe, but it had nothing to do with vindictive aliens. “I think sex would be far more satisfying for both of us.”

  A dim memory surfaced. She’d threatened to kill him if he touched her. Was she insane? She only had to look at him and she wanted to touch him. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more right now than to fall against his gorgeously bronzed chest and feel his arms around her. Since she didn’t trust herself to do just that, she staggered back a step and came up against the side of the bed. “How could I kill you? I thought you were immortal.”

  He shrugged, and his muscles flexed in breathtaking harmony.

  “Compared to a human’s lifespan. Not compared to, for example, a member of the Alpha Pantheon.”

  “So you really can die?” The notion was astonishing and yet his example made perfect sense. After all, to a butterfly a human would appear immortal.

  “Everything ends eventually.” Finally he took a step toward her, but still didn’t touch her. “Is this your strategy? An attempt to talk me to death? Because it won’t work.”

  She didn’t want it to work. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him close, breathe in his scent and drag her fingers through his hair. The image was so visceral it was a shock to realize that, in reality, they weren’t even touching.

  She reared back, forgetting she was already pinned against the bed, and lost her balance. Before she could push herself off the bed he trapped her between his hard thighs. And there was no need to imagine inhaling his scent because its evocative promise tantalized her with every ragged breath she took.

  She was far too close to his groin. If he wasn’t still wearing his pants she’d likely be—

  She let out a pitiful groan and fell back, bracing her weight on her hands. The action thrust her breasts forward and she probably looked as if she was giving him a blatant come-hither invitation. But at least now she was no longer mere inches from the hypnotic bulge in his pants.

  Briefly she squeezed her eyes shut before forcing herself to look up into his face. He wore a self-satisfied smile as if he knew exactly what had just crawled through her mind.

  “Is that all you ever think about?” The accusation would have sounded better if her voice didn’t drip with lust. She plowed on regardless. “Sex?”

  He leaned forward until she had the choice of meeting his mouth with hers or lying flat on the bed. It immediately became apparent her mouth held no interest for him as he flattened his chest against her breasts in order to push her back. So much for choice.

  With his hands on either side of her shoulders, her nipples strained against the delicious friction of his naked chest. God, how degrading. She was the one who couldn’t stop thinking of sex.

  “When I’m with you?” His breath whispered across her parted lips. “Yes.”

  Her legs were trapped between his muscular thighs, his cock nudged securely against her damp core, and they were plastered together from groin to chest. Yet he didn’t crush her with the full extent of his weight—just enough so she couldn’t escape.

  Not that she wanted to escape.

  “Just another notch on your bedpost.” She dug her fingers into the cool cotton of his sheets to stop herself from raking them through his hair.

  “Something like that.”

  It shouldn’t hurt, but it did. But she’d never been just a notch on anyone’s bedpost before. Then again, Gabe wasn’t just anyone. He was an archangel. She didn’t even want to imagine how many women he’d had in the past.

  “What happened to just one—” The word lodged in her throat as Gabe trailed his fingers along the length of her arm, over her hip, and unhooked one of her suspenders. Somehow she couldn’t say fuck when his lips were all but touching hers. “Time,” she substituted, feeling ridiculous but relieved that he didn’t laugh at her belated show of prudery. “You said it would get me out of your system.” She hadn’t forgiven him for that. She’d never forgive him for that. But the anger she should be feeling at the memory stood no chance against the molten desire that seethed in her veins.

  He unhooked a second suspender and slid under her thigh to tackle a third. It was shockingly erotic.

  “It didn’t.” No attempt at flattery, just that stark response. He shifted his weight and began to work on her other stocking. “That’s why I’m still here.”

  “Big of you.” The words grated between her teeth. Her temper didn’t improve when Gabe flashed her a wicked smile and deliberately ground his erect cock against the crotchless G-string.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t want me again.” He sounded so sure of himself. So damn smug. It didn’t help that she couldn’t breathe properly. Her heart hammered like a thing possessed and she was already so wet he had to feel her even through his pants.

  She squirmed, but since his thighs were as unmoving as granite all she succeeded in doing was agitating her sensitive clit against his rigid length.

  More furious with herself than him, she punched him just above his heart. He retaliated by rolling her stocking over her thigh.

  “What the hell,” she gasped, “do you think you’re doing?”

  He pinned her to the bed with one arm across her chest while he stripped the stocking off her foot, the shoe tumbling to the floor.

  “I don’t want you looking like Mephisto’s whore any more.”

  She forgot to punch him again. “Mephisto’s what?” Was he suggesting that’s what she was? Even after she’d told him she had never met the egocentric bastard before today?

  He peeled the other stocking from her before she quite realized. He no longer looked amused, either. “Don’t ever get dressed up for him again.”

  She grabbed his throat and sank her nails into him. “Or what?” She glared into his eyes and dug in deeper. It wasn’t as if she could really hurt him.

  He gripped her wrist and forced her arm above her head. Her other arm was still trapped beneath his body and she couldn’t move a muscle although every nerve she possessed screamed in fiery torment.

  “Or I’ll have to tether you until you learn your place.”

  She huffed out a breathless laugh of derision. “I’d like to see you try.” God, she hoped he couldn’t guess just how much she’d like to see him try. She still retained a tiny sliver of
pride, after all.

  “That can be arranged.” Without breaking his hypnotic gaze he slid something oddly abrasive around her entrapped wrist. Shock punched through her and shivered in the pit of her belly. He’d taken up her dare.

  “What?” She squirmed, twisting her head, trying to see exactly what he was doing. “Oh my god, are you using those stockings?”

  He tightened the knot around her wrist and tugged as if testing its strength. Then he wrapped his other arm around her waist and heaved her further onto the bed. She managed to dig the nails of her free hand into his shoulder, and his warm flesh sent tremors of pure desire sizzling along her sensitized nerves.

  “Might as well get some more use from them before I burn them.” He leaned over her, apparently unconcerned when her nails scored across his chest, and although she couldn’t see what he was doing it was blindingly obvious.

  She doubled her efforts at escaping his grip, her heart galloping and breath rasping in her lungs. She might as well have tried to fight a mountain, and within seconds he pulled back, straddled her hips and gave her a smile of pure masculine triumph.

  Her arm was pulled taut above her head and he had clearly fastened the end of the stocking to the foot of his bed. She wasn’t sure whether to melt in a puddle of mindless lust or poke out his glorious eyes.

  “Like being in control, don’t you?”

  “Always.”

  “Is that your thing? Tying up women with their stockings?” Even as she spoke he was wrapping the second length of fishnet around her wrist in a leisurely manner as if he had all the time in the world. As if he wasn’t on the point of spontaneously combusting if they didn’t have sex right now.

  Or maybe that was just her.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s my thing.” The corner of his mouth quirked as if he found her question quaint instead of sexy.

  Not that sexy had been her intention.

  “Although it’s the first time I’ve used the woman’s own stockings on her.”