Geesh. Somebody had a butt load of pent-up aggression toward an Archangel. From the one interaction I’d witnessed between them it seemed like the feeling was mutual. I mused what could be the cause of it but didn’t press him to divulge the details. The shadow that flashed across his face whenever he spoke of The Archangel was scary as shit in all its homicidal rage-like glory. I had no doubt that he would or did occasionally pretend that a Brethren or two was The Archangel when he stuck a blade into their chests.
“Can Archangels be killed the same way Brethren can?”
He smiled a little sadistically at the question. “I don’t know. Unfortunately, they can only be killed in their corporeal form so I haven’t had the chance to test out the theory. But Brethren are only Archangels who have been cast into hell so it stands to reason that the answer is yes.”
I stared at the stretch of endless dark road ahead of us periodically illuminated by the headlights of an oncoming car passing by. I mulled his answer to my question over in my mind thinking about the Brethren I’d seen so far. I’d never seen an Archangel in the flesh but the ones at Fusion appeared human for all intents and purposes. The only thing that gave them away was the silver coloring that ringed their irises. Then I thought about the Brethren that had attacked me. There was no way in hell he could have blended in with the larger human population. The massive black wings coming out of his shoulder blades and deadly sharp fangs made sure of that.
“Do you know if Archangels have vampire-like fangs that function in the same fashion too?”
Chase’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “I asked The Archangel that once. Partly to tick him off and partly because I really wanted to know. His incensed reaction didn’t disappoint. Apparently the answer is no. The fangs are a side effect of the toll that hell takes on the Brethren’s essence. That’s also the reason their wings darken from white to black.
The changes are like an outward manifestation of their inner darkness.”
“Huh,” I said watching another car’s headlights pass by. “That’s interesting. So Brethren are thought to possess an inner darkness and Archangels an inner light?”
The answering laughter that barked out of Chase filled the car’s intimate interior and vibrated off its glass windows. “They might be fighting on the side of
good,”
he took his hands off the wheel and made air quotes as he said the word, “but I’d bet my right arm that Archangel’s don’t possess some inherent inner goodness or light. Like Charissa told us, Archangels can be just as cruel and dismissive of human life as the Brethren. We’re nothing more than game pieces on a board to both sides.”
As he spoke bitterness tinged his voice hinting that he was speaking from experience. However, his words were also tinged with an all too familiar pain that I didn’t think it my place to poke at. God knew I had wounds of my own that were better left ignored. The slightest touch or the briefest brush against them threatened to peel the thin scabs covering them on a good day.
We fell into silence again. Though it was much different from the companionable silence we shared during the first part of the drive. The silence we shared now was thick and heavy, strained almost to the point of painful.
He turned the music up a notch and I swiped my thumb across the lock screen of my phone. He buried whatever troubled him in the music while I buried mine in a book.
We pulled into a small bed and breakfast that sat situated on the Savannah River and just shy of the Georgia-South Carolina border a little after midnight. I was about to ask the middle aged woman behind the desk that kept giggling at everything Chase said like a schoolgirl for two rooms when I remembered that he was now officially my boyfriend. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant nor had I entirely come to terms with it, but I figured it would be silly to insist on separate rooms considering our new title and what we’d done earlier that day. I didn’t think it too silly to request separate beds however. When I asked the woman if there was a room with double beds available Chase gave me one of his wolfish grins.
“It’s a little late to be modest now don’t you think?”
When the lady behind the check-in counter eyed him then me knowingly my cheeks blushed pink. “I’m sorry, but we only have rooms with king beds left.” She made a valiant effort of catching then swallowing the smirk that followed as she handed each of us a card key.
“Shit!” I muttered louder than I intended when I got out of the shower because I was talking to myself.
“What’s wrong?” Chase called through the door.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I just forgot to bring a t-shirt to sleep in”
The bathroom door opened a crack, making my breath hitch a little in my chest, but it never opened more than the thin slit that exposed a sliver of light from the room beyond. Chase’s tanned arm appeared in the opening with a large navy blue shirt dangling from his outstretched hand.
“I packed an extra shirt.”
“Thanks,” I said taking it from his hand. I just knew his head would pop through the opening next, bearing that infuriatingly wolfish grin his lips liked to contort into when he was trying to be facetious instead of charming. But to his credit it didn’t. After I took the shirt, his arm disappeared and the door clicked shut behind it.
“It’s all yours,” I said stepping out of the bathroom.
He stared at me in a way that if I didn’t know any better I’d call dumbfounded. I self-consciously shifted from one foot to the other. My hands itched to tug at the hem of his t-shirt and pull it down a little lower on my thighs but I thought that would look a little too self-conscious. “Um you’re staring …Is something wrong with me?” I nervously ran my hand across the bottom part of my face hoping to God I didn’t have toothpaste smeared across my chin or something.
He blinked and the odd expression he wore disappeared. “No, nothing’s wrong. You’re beautiful as always,” he said crossing the room and stopping in front of me. We were so close my bare toes touched his. His hand played with the hem of the t-shirt, slightly grazing my exposed thigh and sending a small shiver up my spine. “I never understood the appeal before now. Of seeing a girl in your clothes. I guess it only has its intended effect when you really like the girl.” His lips pressed a kiss against my forehead. “I’ll be right back. Don’t fall asleep without me okay.”
It was the most chaste of kisses but it still made the small shiver morph into a stronger one.
I made a beeline for the bed and jumped beneath the sheets in record time. I laid on my back, then shifted to my side, then rolled to my stomach, then sat up only to find myself on my back again with my hands fisted tightly at my side. I’d done things with a boy before but I’d never slept with one before. Like in a bed, beside him, for the duration of the night. It hit me that I was about to do so for the first time with Chase and it left me a nervous wreck. How was I supposed to act? What was I supposed to do? Was sex automatically assumed to be on the agenda?
He exited the bathroom in a pair of sweatpants that hung low on his hips. His hair was still damp and curled up adorably and sexily all at the same time on the ends. When he raised an arm to push back a curl that fell into his eyes the corded muscle in it and on his broad chest stretched and flexed. Heat immediately flooded to an area that it really did not need to be rushing to considering the minimal amount of clothing between us and the fact that he was about to climb beneath the sheets next to me.
I thought about the last time we’d been in a somewhat similar position and embarrassment flooded me in response to thinking about my drunken behavior after the charity ball. I forced my eyes off of his bare chest, determined not to make a fool of myself twice. This time if he rejected me I’d have nothing to blame my behavior on. I was completely sober.
Chase got into bed beside me and before I could panic over what to do and what not to do he curled an arm around my waist and pulled me into his side. He kissed me gingerly on the mouth then said goodnight. He stretched the arm not holding my waist behind his head and closed his eyes. In the next instant his chest began to rise and fall in a steady rhythm that couldn’t be faked. I gaped up at his slackened face.
Seriously?! No one went to sleep that quickly.
He was conscious one second and then completely unconscious half a second later. I found myself yawning as a I marveled at the record time he’d fallen asleep in. My head became too heavy for my neck to support and I rested it on his chest. I tentatively laid my right hand on his chest. As I listened to the steady rhythm of his heart and snuggled closer into the warmth of his body I relaxed against him, letting the warmth flow around me, envelope me and lull me to sleep.
I vaguely remember smiling at the fact that him not having tried anything when he got into bed spoke to the amount of decency he possessed. It was sweet that he hadn’t. Even gentlemanly. By that point I was already halfway dragged under by fatigue. It’d been a long day and a long drive. Hell it’d been a long forty eight hours.
I frowned. I’m pretty sure it was inside my head because my muscles were well past the point of functioning in any fashion that they would have if I was fully awake. It was sweet that he hadn’t tried anything but it was also… disappointing. I wondered at why he hadn’t feeling more self-conscious than I’d ever felt in my life. Was it me? Was I not attractive enough? Was he not attracted to me enough? Something ugly reared up inside me and it made me think about what he’d said earlier.
I never understood the appeal before now. Of seeing a girl in your clothes. I guess it only has its intended effect when you really like the girl.
Did that mean there had been other girls in his clothes and how many damn it? The ugliness began to take a more solid form but before it could fully manifest itself my consciousness clicked off
and I was fully dragged under.
I woke up to find myself even more entangled with Chase than when I went to sleep. My head still rested on his check but both of my arms were wrapped around his torso and both of his cocooned my waist. Our legs were so wrapped around one another’s that if it were not for the sheer difference in size and muscular build it would be hard to decipher where one began and another ended. Slightly mortified by not knowing if our intertwined position was my doing or his, I went to disentangle myself from him before he woke up. But as soon as I moved, I found myself flipped on my back and Chase very much awake on top of me, kissing me while his hands roved all over my exposed skin doing delicious things when they disappeared underneath barriers of clothing.
One hand kneaded my breast at the same time the other slipped fingers between my folds and found a spot within them that made me intake a sharp breath then let it out on a breathy moan. He smiled down at me wickedly, twin dimples teasingly appearing in the hollows of his cheeks, before swiftly disappearing under the comforter. His tongue joined in with the mind-bending things his fingers were doing. My back arched when I called out his name and literally saw stars.
“Is that how you usually wake the people you sleep with up?” I half jokingly asked him and half really wanted to know.
We lay on our sides facing each other. “Just the ones I really like and that I call my girlfriend.” His eyes twinkled with mischief.
“And how many would that be?” I said dryly. The question was out before I could think about what I was saying or stop myself from saying it.
“”Including you?” The twinkle in his eyes grew until they looked like two precious gems under a lit display for all the world to marvel at their brilliance and their beauty,
“Yeah, including me?” I gritted out through clenched teeth. My mind flashed back to his words the night before.
I never understood the appeal before now. Of seeing a girl in your clothes. I guess it only has its intended effect when you really like the girl.
Again, I found myself wondering if that meant other girls had been in his clothes and just what that number of girls was.
He shrugged a bare shoulder casually as if what he was about to say was no big deal. I suddenly felt very vulnerable and very stupid for lying next to him in bed with his shirt on and nothing else underneath, not even my panties anymore. Those had come off the moment his head had disappeared beneath the covers.
“Just one.” I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and a mixture of relief and a goofy gushy heart melting feeling washed over me.
“Oh. Okay.” I responded trying to play it cool. “So that means…”
He snaked an arm around me pulling me into him. My body fit against his perfectly as if it was made to do so. He looked at me in earnest, his intensely blue gaze holding mine. “It means that yes I have been with females before but I’m not a man whore. I have standards. High ones and I don’t sleep with a girl unless there is some kind of a connection between us. But I have never thought about a girl the way I think about you. What I feel for you is different. Our connection is different as is my attraction to you. It’s still new but it is also so much more than anything I’ve ever felt before. It also means that I want to continue exploring this
thing
between us and see where it takes us. I’m not going to say relationship because I know you well enough by now that the word will probably make you bolt out of the bed and go running in the opposite direction of me. But I would really like it if you didn’t. If you gave this, gave us, a shot. Promise me Alex that you will do that? I’m not asking you to make a grand commitment or even a permanent one because this is still really new, but please say that you will at least not bolt on me without giving us a try and seeing where we might end up?”