“Yahirooo. Oh Yahiro, you’ve been a bad, bad girl.”
She curled up into herself in the corner of her dank cell. The Snake, William’s right-hand man, his number one, had come down to the pits to torment her.
“Baby-doll, why hide in the dark?” he laughed, excitedly. It made her nauseous; it made her alert. Any moment he would switch on his flashlight and burn it into her eyes.
She cowered like the scum she had become. She deserved this. She had gone too deep into hell. And when one went too far, there was no turning back. What had been just another undercover job had become her entire life. A clammy hand shot out and took ahold of her hair.
Yahiro shook and yanked her hand up to cover her mouth, but as she did so, her fingers brushed over the ground. A blast of light burst forth, stunning her, igniting the entire forest in gold with one long pulse before it faded back to a bubble of light that enclosed her... But she wasn’t alone. A man crouched directly in front of her.
She stiffened and didn’t move, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat. The stone talisman she had dropped was suddenly below her fingers and it created a beam from her touch that swirled around him in a mesmerizing way. Her body heated, unwillingly, her breath caught up to her, and she inhaled the new scent greedily.
Sugar. Sweet and sappy. She licked her lips and broke her gaze from his brown eyes, lingering over gold wings that haloed his form.
Not a human. Not. Human.It came to her like molasses. For some reason, she wasn’t surprised, only... hopeful that there were humanoids on this strange planet. He remained still, his eyes roving over her frame as much as she did his.
The man could be an angel.If it weren’t for his devilish eyes.Maybe this is heaven? Maybe I’m already dead.Yahiro flinched, her hand cupping her torn up foot.Heaven is dumb painful. My nightmares followed me into the afterlife.
“Naro, Luchen...” he said, his lips forming the strange words. The translator in her head processed them but only came back with aNo.
“No?” she whispered back. His eyes twinkled and the side of his lips twitched. She caught it all as the swirling aura moved around him.
“Luchen,” he said again. No full translation registered. Only possible words: luscious, luminous, luchar in Spanish. Several examples of famous Asian men came to mind but overall it was unhelpful.I don’t think he’s talking about the deceased Taiwanese magician. She forced her translator to stop.
“Luchen,” she repeated, her voice rough from her earlier screams and thick with emotion.
His eyes narrowed dangerously at her and she jerked back. He caught her hand, now holding her sunstone and keeping her in place. His touch seized her and she gasped out in shock. Burning heat and that odd connection from before gripped her, igniting and spreading like dragonfire through her body. His long, taloned fingers clenched tighter around her wrist and suddenly she wanted more.
So much more. Yahiro leaned closer to the alien man, needing to feel more of him, her body demanding to plaster against his chest. She lowered her gaze to it, bared in front of her in all its glory, sculpted with rippling muscles so different from a human’s tonal structure yet so similar.
A moan escaped her lips, drawing his gaze to her mouth. She watched it all, her eyes going a mile a minute, taking in everything about him.
The alien angel wore clothes, soft ones, loose and billowy trousers that banded low on his waist and right above the crux of his thighs. She glanced between his legs, hoping to see an outline but if there was one, it was hidden well behind the white cloth.
Do angels... alien angels have a sex?A blush warmed her cheeks. His lower arms were wrapped in golden wristbands that streaked up to his elbows. They sparkled between them, the same color as the light.
She noticed, as she took him in, that every article he wore was either gold or white, so at odds with the darkness and the muddled green forest they were in. He had piercings, also gold, on the sides of his lower lip, his eyebrows—symmetrical—and gold bars through his nipples.
But they weren’t human nipples. Yahiro stared. His nipples were shiny and gold, like what she could see of his drawn back hair. They weren’t round like a human's, though they were the same general size, but star-shaped, a seven-pointed star. Each point of the star was also pierced with a tiny gold bauble.
He reminded her of a desert nomad, a desert rogue, or a bronze-skinned ninja who wore the colors to hide amongst the day instead of those that would hide him in the dark.
His fingers squeezed, bringing her eyes back up to his.
“Douna Luchen, mana reem?” His voice was husky. Once again her translator gave her options. One came to mind. Her eyes widened.Is he asking for my name?Yahiro hoped.
“I don’t understand you.”
He canted his head. “Hrrmmm...”
She let out a small laugh. “I knowthatsound though.” He didn’t laugh back; instead, he drew her slightly closer until she had to shuffle her knees between his open ones.
His heat enveloped her, bringing her comfort, more so than the stone had earlier. His hold on her changed with her nearness, and she glanced up as his also-golden wings surrounded them. Once they were entirely closed around her, a sense of safety, sweet safety shot through her.
For the first time since she had become a cop, she felt utterly and completely safe. Yahiro hooded her eyes and lifted her head, basking in the stone’s light, and the wonderful way her alien angel made her feel.
***
QUIST
