Chapter One
Ariel stretched luxuriously in the early morning light and stole a glance at the luminous green digital numbers on her alarm clock. For only having been asleep two hours, she felt amazingly well rested. And the incredible dream she'd had . . . . Her body felt pleasantly boneless and relaxed, like she really
did have the mind-blowing sex she'd dreamed of.
Maybe it's time for me to find a boyfriend. She smiled.
Probably a message from my subconscious that getting laid a little more often would be a good thing.
Her feeling of satisfied well-being lasted about as long as it took her to look across the room.
The man from her dream sat in her vanity chair, as placid as any statue, as breathtakingly naked as she remembered. His dark wings folded gracefully behind him; he had turned the chair, facing the bed, so his arms rested on the back. He'd apparently stood vigil over her while she slept. Her eyes took a very pleasant tour of his muscular frame; it took her that long to realize she was just as naked as he was.
She quickly recalled the events of the night before. A tiny squeak of shock escaped as she added two and two. Again . . . and again. The answer kept coming up to a very frightening four.
The presence of the winged man in her boudoir wasn't the part that freaked her out; although, by any rational measure, she should have been screaming her head off. But no, what truly horrified her was the thought of how utterly she'd cast aside all her inhibitions. Such wanton behavior, completely alien to her nature. She had practically
raped him, for Christ's sake!
Ariel reconsidered that thought the moment it occurred. The man—Moradiel—had been a willing, even eager, participant. But in the same moment she remembered his name, she was also treated to a flash of those intense blue eyes and the echo of his exotically accented voice:
I will be damned, cast out . . . . It is no tragedy, love. For this, for you
, I'll take damnation and shed no tear for what I've left behind.
Over her racing thoughts, Moradiel asked, "Did you sleep well, love?"
Nice, normal morning conversation.
Okay. She could cope with this, even if the idea of an angel calling her "love" made her want to pinch herself to make sure she was really as awake as she thought. She took a deep breath. "Y-yes. Did
you?"
Moradiel laughed softly. It was the first time she had heard him do that, and his laugh seemed the most musical sound she'd ever heard. All her most intimate nerve endings sounded an alarm of raw lust at the sound of his mellow tenor. "Angels do not sleep, love."
Feeling self-conscious, Ariel looked at her red bathrobe, hanging neatly on its hook by the bathroom door. Moradiel followed her stare. An instant later, he draped the soft terrycloth over her shoulders. She was too startled to ask how he'd managed to move so fast.
"Is that better?" he asked, his tone full of concern.
"Yes," she answered. With no good excuse to be on her feet, she sank heavily back down onto the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Despite her external stillness and apparent calm, her mind was flying faster than she could follow, trying to make her present circumstances jibe with her memories. Several awkward minutes later, she said, "Last night . . . that wasn't a dream, was it?"
He shook his head in an odd fashion. Rather than the customary wagging she was used to, he pulled his chin an inch to the left, then back again. It was a minimalist gesture that somehow spooked her more than if he'd given a more robust denial.
"No, Ariel. It was not."
His large, warm hands came down on the backs of hers and rested lightly there as his gaze caught and held her eyes. She swore she could feel him reading every thought in her mind.
"And we really fu—uh, made love?" Ariel asked, narrowly avoiding the crudity. Maybe the night before, when he'd awakened her from falling asleep at the wheel just in time to save her from death, she might've been excused for it. Here and now, in the bright light of a new Texas morning, she didn't dare curse in the presence of an angel. Least of all
this angel.
He smiled. "We certainly did." His hands clasped her own tenderly. "And it was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced."
Ariel wasn't sure whether to be flattered or taken aback at the sincere emotion in his tone. "I . . . ." She stopped and gathered her thoughts. "I don't usually do that."
His delicately arched eyebrows drew together in a slight frown. "Do what, love?"
The eight-hundred-pound gorilla she'd been trying to ignore suddenly took center stage. "I don't usually behave like such . . . such a
slut!" She turned her face away, her lower lip trembling with the precursor to tears. "I mean, you saved my life, but I've never thrown myself at
anyone the way I did you."
Moradiel sat perfectly still for several seconds. When he finally spoke, he gave the impression he was choosing his words with extreme caution.
"Does that mean that you regret what we did?" he asked, looking as crestfallen as a little boy denied an ice-cream cone.
"No. Yes.
Damn." She turned back to face him, flipping a strand of hair out of her face. "I
don't regret making love with you. I just don't want you to think any less of
me for it."
As quickly as his visage had clouded over, it brightened. "I could never think of you as anything but perfectly divine, my love. How else—"
He broke off abruptly, seeming to listen intently to a sound she couldn't hear. His eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted as if he had just taken a bite of something that was not at all to his taste. Leaning forward, he brushed her lips with his own, causing her body to ache for him all over again.
"I will return in a moment, love."
To Ariel's discomfiture, he vanished.
She stood and took two steps toward the bathroom, only to find her way blocked by Moradiel's imposing frame. His wings had draped around him in his usual incognito attire: a long black leather coat. She could hear his teeth grinding.
"I am sorry, love. You need to pack."
Her mind whirled in confusion. "
Pack? What do you—?"
"I have less than five minutes to get you safely away from here. Azrael is coming." Moradiel's shoulders were trembling with tension.
"What? Who's Azrael?"
"My lord. The one I serve in the Host."
"What does he want with
me?" She demanded.
For answer, Moradiel gave her a look so bleak that it sent shards of ice coursing through her blood.
"Your life. And your soul."
"Can you—?" Ariel couldn't finish the thought.
Moradiel seemed to grasp the unspoken question immediately. "I can and I
will protect you, as best as I am able. But you have to hurry, love, if we are to have any chance." There was no hint of tension in his voice, but Ariel thought she could detect a low tremor of fear underlying the words, lending them a dangerous urgency.
Ariel froze for a moment, more frightened by his matter-of-fact manner than she would have been if he'd reappeared and started barking orders. One heartbeat later, the spell broke and she rushed to the closet, the robe falling off her shoulders to pool on the floor behind her. She tore various articles of clothing off hangers and shelves. "Can't Azrael appear the same way you do?"
"He can. However, he
cannot be seen to act in this world. What he does must be accomplished by "natural" means. You were supposed to die because you fell asleep at the wheel of your car; that would have been acceptable. An angelic assassination would
not be. It would leave him with a most untidy situation to clean up and explanations he would not care to have to make. Therefore, he will come for you under cover of the storm."
"Wh—?" Ariel began, but before the word had fully left her lips, she noticed the quality of the light in the room had altered considerably while they'd been talking. Moradiel stalked to the window and threw the curtains wide so she could see.
"That storm."
Outside, the clouds boiled, darkening even as she watched, taking on that distinct greenish cast everyone throughout the central United States learned to fear by age three. They seemed to swallow the sun without a trace, building with a speed just slightly too fast for a "normal" storm. A lightning bolt struck close by, throwing strange, cavorting shadows on the walls and leaving flaring purple afterimages dancing on her retinas. The crash of thunder was so immediate and so loud, Ariel—no stranger to violent weather—jumped and screamed. She zipped up a small suitcase with shaking fingers and rushed to Moradiel's side. In a quiet corner of her mind that hadn't been panicked, she was astonished at her acceptance of the new paradigm into which she had been thrust.
"What do we do?"
He gathered her into his arms and pulled her firmly against his unyielding body. His eyes flared with all the fury of the storm outside.
"I love you, Ariel. I will let no harm come to you. Can you trust in that?"
She nodded mutely. If the angel who'd been sent to take her soul had instead chosen to spare her life out of love, it made no sense for her to doubt. Especially not when another apocalyptic thunderbolt struck the tree right outside her window, making her tremble even more fiercely, press deeper into Moradiel's embrace. Against her will, a mad thought flitted through her mind:
this is an angel. An angel who loved me
enough to turn down Heaven. I think I just might be falling in love with him,
too.
He leaned down for a kiss, and the world seemed to stop around her as she parted her lips to accept him. Her last thought was to correct her previous one.
Whether or not it made sense, and whatever may come, she
did love him too. She'd analyze it later.
Then, there was nothing . . . .
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xoxo 
