Archangel of Mercy (25 page)

Her muscles contracted around him but still he probed, still he massaged with erotic intent. She hissed with rabid frustration against his bloodied lip and surged upward, shuddering with pleasure as his fingers dragged against her trembling channel.

“Are you sure,” she gasped as she sank slowly onto his engorged cock, “that you’re not some kind of sex god?”

His grin was feral. “I’ll be your sex archangel if you want me to.”

“I’m serious.” With agonizing deliberation she lowered herself another inch onto his shaft. “I only have to look at you and I want to jump on you and screw you senseless.”

He snorted with laughter and his cock shoved further inside her, a delicious sensation of penetration and possession. She tensed her muscles around him, squeezing him tight, and thrills pulsed through her at the way he gritted his teeth as if she pushed him to the very edge.

“I’m happy to say”—he sounded as if every word caused untold pain—“the feeling is mutual.”

Palms spread on his chest she pushed herself up. Kneeling on the bed, imprisoning his hips, her calves cradled his thighs as she looked down at him.

Bronze flesh, taut muscle and a face that could make . . . gods weep. Slowly she raised her hips, felt him slide from her embrace. And then she sank back down again, quivering at the sensation of how completely he filled her. As if they were two parts of the whole. As if they belonged together.

The thoughts fluttered through her mind, silly and romantic, yet utterly compelling.

He bucked beneath her, spurring her onward. The breath rushed from her lungs as his size expanded her tender flesh, as he filled her body and heart and soul. Intermingled, they became one, and she couldn’t feel where she ended and he began because there was no divide.

There had never been any divide
.

As she convulsed around him, as he came with brutal ferocity within her, his arms encircled her waist and he ground out words in his strange language. Words she couldn’t understand but that captured her heart, regardless.

For eternity.

Chapter Thirty-three

S
PRAWLED
on Gabe’s chest, Aurora listened to the comforting thud of his heart as it gradually slowed its erratic thunder. He held her close, one arm around her waist, his other hand curled around her shoulder. Did he fear she might try to escape?

She pressed her lips against his damp skin, closed her eyes. She had to stop imagining his every gesture meant so much more than it did. She was the one who feared he might escape. And her heart would never recover.

Dawn had broken and the sun had risen. Any moment Gabe would shatter this tranquil interlude and there would be no time for her questions. She snuggled more securely against him, smiled when he merely tightened his embrace. As if abandoning this cocoon of serenity was the last thing on his mind.

“Gabe.” She traced her fingertips over his impressive biceps. “What’s that language you sometimes speak?”

She felt his surprise vibrate through his body. It was obvious that was the last question he imagined she might ever ask.

“It’s unknown on Earth nowadays.” His fingers played with her hair, seemingly unaware of what he was doing. “It eventually evolved into what’s now referred to as archaic Sumerian.”

Eventually evolved?
Archaic Sumerian was one of the oldest languages ever discovered. But Gabe was referring to a civilization that had existed further back in the past. A civilization she knew nothing about.

The civilization he had mentioned when he’d told her how Evalyne could not possibly be descended from an angel.

“What happened?” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “Why haven’t we discovered any archaeological evidence?”

Still he didn’t push her away. But instinctively she felt his mind recoil, and beneath her, his muscles tensed as if readying for battle. She squeezed her eyes shut, cursed her tongue. But still couldn’t regret her questions. If he couldn’t share his past with her, she could forget all of her half-formed dreams of some kind of future together.

“Traces did survive. But mankind chose to ignore their history. As far as humans are concerned, nothing of importance happened on their planet more than five thousand years ago.”

She crossed her arms over his chest and gazed down at him.

“Are you saying we’ve missed something? That a great civilization flourished during that time?”

“No. Five thousand years ago humans were back to scrabbling in the dirt.” He sounded grimly satisfied by that fact. “I’m talking about the end of the last so-called Ice Age, Aurora. That was when we discovered Earth. That was the true golden age of technological advance and enlightenment.”

For a horrible moment she thought he was mocking her. But he looked deadly serious.

“But”—she cleared her throat, tried again—“people were hunter-gatherers then, Gabe.”

His hand trailed from her shoulder and gently cupped her face. As if she was something fragile. Precious. This time she didn’t even bother smothering the thought. Because, no matter how improbable, deep in her heart she knew Gabe did think she was something precious.

If she was still nothing more than a toy to him he wouldn’t be laying here, suffering her questions. He wouldn’t be trying to explain an impossible past to her. He would have dismissed her, the way he’d dismissed her concerns and opinions on the day they’d first met.

“Yes, that’s true. For the most part.”

His agreement threw her, and she frowned, completely confused. “The most part?”

“Eleven thousand years ago,” he said, “there was a vast continent where the culture was rich and diverse. That’s where we made our playground. The scholars of that time were our teachers, our lovers. They taught us about the stars and the celestial cycle of the Earth.”

Enthralled, Aurora stared into his mesmeric eyes. They were glazed, as he recalled living in that far-off time, in that fantastical land.

“Our goddess was fine with this. At least we weren’t polluting the human gene pool with countless offspring.” This time his smile was bitter. “She’d got some serious shit from the other Alphas over her
experiments
. They would have ripped her apart if they’d been able to. Not only were we created from them all, but she’d given us wings. The ultimate indulgence.”

“They were
jealous
?”
Gods
had been jealous of
archangels
?

He shrugged, like it didn’t matter and he no longer cared. “They rarely interacted with us. We were content to remain on Earth. And eventually some of us discovered love.”

“And your goddess wasn’t fine about
that
.” It wasn’t a question, and when he gave her a probing look she knew she was right.

“She didn’t like it.” He paused, frowned, and for a moment she had the certainty that he wasn’t going to tell her anything more. She brushed her lips across his, a butterfly kiss, and hoped with all her heart he wouldn’t stop now. “But she tolerated it.”

“Because as far as she was concerned,” Aurora said, the words spilling from her before she could stop herself, “the love of an archangel for their beloved was nothing compared to the eternal love you bore for her.”

The look of shock on Gabe’s face mirrored the shock ricocheting through her chest.
Where had that come from?
Why was she so sure that she was right?

“Something like that.” His voice was guarded, and it was obvious he was having trouble processing her last comment. That made two of them. “We never chose to enlighten her.”

A chill inched along Aurora’s arms, not at what Gabe had just said. But at what he had left unsaid.

“But souls are reborn.” Her voice was hushed as the implication thundered through her mind, illuminating dark fragments of long forgotten dreams . . .
memories
? “She thought the love died when your beloved died. She didn’t know you waited for them to come back to you.”

His hand tightened around her waist and his intense gaze roved over her face, searching for something. Something elusive; something unimaginable. Her breath stalled in her throat as his eyes darkened and then he slowly blinked, and the moment shattered.

“It never occurred to her we were capable of undying devotion for a mere human. Never crossed her mind that despite her best manipulations and sacred edict, a few precious Nephilim had been born.”

Dread scraped a skeletal claw along her spine. She had wanted to know what had happened that had made archangels decide to never love again. But now that it seemed Gabe was willing to tell her she realized she didn’t want to know.

Was afraid to know.

But Gabe was looking at her, waiting for her to ask the question. He wanted her to ask . . . so that he could continue.

Did he believe that by sharing the past with her, the magnitude of his misplaced guilt might diminish?

She had no choice. She was being ridiculous and melodramatic because no matter how awful whatever had happened was, why would knowing it make her afraid?

“What did she do?”

He didn’t answer. Just continued to look at her, as if he had no idea who she was or why she was in his bed. But he didn’t release his possessive hold on her, either.

“Why am I telling you all this?” He speared his fingers through her hair, held the back of her head. “I’ve never told anyone of my past. Why you? Why now?”

“I don’t know.” She mirrored his actions, spearing her fingers through his hair and cradling his temple. “Why not?”

For long moments he didn’t reply. She could feel the internal battle that raged in his mind—the desire to confide and the millennia-old conditioning that demanded eternal silence. But he hadn’t entered her mind. They weren’t sharing thoughts. And for once there was no fear hovering on the edges of her consciousness that an insidious insanity lurked.

She just knew.

Finally he released a heavy sigh, and she knew he’d come to a decision. One that might damn him forever.

“She walked the Earth. To see for herself why we were so enamored. She found those willing to betray our secrets. They told her of the Nephilim, told her how those archangels who fell waited, life after mortal life, until their beloved was reborn.”

A terrible certainty gripped her. If so many myths and legends had basis in truth, then so too did the stories of the great flood that had all but wiped out humankind.

And the heavens opened and the seas rose and escape was denied to all those with tainted blood.

It was more than a thought. It felt like ancient knowledge that she had always known but never before been able to access. Images of tsunamis, of erupting volcanoes, of devastating earthquakes saturated her mind in terrifying detail. She clutched Gabe’s hair, anchored herself in this moment. She was not recalling those events. She was only imagining how it must have been.

“So she”—her mouth was dry, her tongue felt like it didn’t belong to her—“sent the flood to wipe out everything?”

His hard grip on her head eased and he let out a long breath. It sounded almost like regret.

“It’s ironic how the flood lives on in the collective consciousness.” His hand curled around the back of her neck, a potentially threatening gesture, which conversely brought her odd comfort. “Yet the reasons behind it have been lost to antiquity. No, she didn’t send the flood. No single deity sent the flood, Aurora. The geophysical upheavals of that time were simply a part of the natural cycle of the Earth’s clock.”

She relaxed her panicked grip on his hair. That made a lot more sense to her than the vindictive actions of a spurned goddess. Or god, if it came to that.

But Gabe loathed his goddess. And the only reason she could imagine for such hatred was because that Alpha Immortal was, in some way, responsible for the death of his beloved and daughter.

“What did she do, Gabe?”

“There was originally another planet in this solar system,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her question. “The ancients called it Nibiru. But it was more than a planet. It was the City of Angels where we’d been created, where our goddess occasionally resided. More important, it was immune to the natural forces that govern any normal planet.”

They would be safe on Nibiru. Although many would perish on Earth, with the exodus enough would survive to start again, to re-create their society, to pass on their knowledge to future generations . . .

The thought wasn’t hers. Couldn’t be hers. Yet it was so powerful, so absolute.
What was happening to her?
Or was this how it had started with her mother? Not the gradual fading of her old life but the certainty that she had lived
another life
altogether?

“You wanted to save the people. By taking them to your city.”

“We couldn’t have saved them all.” It was obvious that memory razed his soul. “You have to understand something. Their civilization was ancient long before we discovered their continent. They had studied the heavens for millennia, passing on their knowledge from one generation to the next. They’d unearthed the past and with mathematical precision gained foreknowledge of the future. The apocalypse would come.”

He said it with such finality. As if it was a foregone conclusion and nothing could prevent it.

“But they tried to find ways to stop it?” Any advanced civilization would try to prevent the destruction of their way of life if they possibly could.

“No. That was never their design. It was carved into their consciousness that they wouldn’t all survive. It had been an accepted facet of their future for countless generations.” He dragged in a heavy breath. “I’m not saying they were happy about it. But they channeled their energy into preserving what they could. What could be passed down through the ages to descendants far in the future.”

But nothing had survived. No one had ever heard of this great, doomed civilization. A strange sorrow pierced her at that forlorn knowledge.

“What happened?” she said softly, although a part of her didn’t want to know. And again the fear gripped her. A fear she didn’t quite understand but still couldn’t ignore.

“We offered the chance of escape.” A trace of bitterness edged his voice. “For a select few thousand. But the plan leaked and it was like a dam exploded. While the people had accepted their predestined fate and the odds of perishing, they absolutely weren’t ready to accept the kind of intervention we offered. Not when we couldn’t offer it to everyone.”

“They turned against the Nephilim,” she whispered, unsure why she was so certain of that, only knowing she was right. And that vilification of the archangels’ beloved children had survived countless ages, twisting something that was pure and beautiful into a monstrous travesty of the truth.

“And sold us out to our goddess.” His voice was eerily calm. “We didn’t discover this until afterward. If we’d known we would never have answered her call. Never have returned to Nibiru. Never given her the chance to neutralize us while on Earth the continental plates shifted and magnetic poles reversed. While life as we had known it was all but annihilated.”