Chapter Three
Gabe
Fuck me.Mel’s so fucking sexy.
The ultimate temptation.
It takes all my strength as a celestial being to keep myself from pulling the car over, climbing into the backseat and showing her how I really feel about her, right here on the busy streets of downtown Seattle. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, draw her into me and sink myself into that molten hot core, to claim her in the only way I haven’t.
But I can’t.
Melanie is more than my closest friend; she’s my ward. I’m bound by my oath as her guardian angel to protect her, to watch her, to keep her safe.
Those were my instructions from Paradise.
Protect her.
Watch her.
Keep her safe.
Fucking wasn’t part of the job description. If it was, I would have signed up to be guardian class far sooner.
My boss was a hard ass, to say the least, but that’s an archangel for you. You’d think having an archangel as your ex would make things easier.
But no.
Committing lecherous acts together only made her go harder on me, and not in the fun kind of way. At the top of my class, I was used as a model example back at the academy, which only put more pressure on me to be the pure and chaste angel I’m supposed to be.
“Be like Gideon, the exalted hero of all guardians.” That’s what they taught at the academy. Look how long he’s kept his human safe. Look how well he’s integrated into human society. Look how he blends in.
Ha.
What they didn’t teach the poor trainees—or me in particular—is that Fate would look down on me and think, wouldn’t it be really fucking funny if his ward ended up being his fated one?
But oh no, the angels upstairs didn’t like to teach the fact that our kind was just another form of shifter, with needs and wants, and even a mate chosen for each of us by some mysterious force even they didn’t even understand.
We all went about our “holy duties” and pretended we didn’t have needs like mortal shifters. So at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what my heart wanted. Or my cock.
Breaking the laws of Paradise wasn’t an option. The oath I swore when Melanie was assigned as my ward must always be honored, no matter how fucking hard it was not to turn my wing to it.
Under no circumstances could I tell her my true nature. Keeping my secret from her was hard; it had been from the day I saved her in that river. But especially now that shifters were running around out in the open, my cover was in fragile territory. To make matters worse, after all those years holed up in the Underworld, Lucifer Fucking Morningstar decided to crawl out of his pit and set up shop for his stupid titty club inmytown.
Openly gallivanting about as an angel shifter.
Damn him.
It was only a matter of time before the news of his existence, or the existence of all of us, would spread like wildfire. And after so many years of us trying to keep it under wraps, the king of all the fallen was about to blow it all in a matter of months like the shameless twat he was.
As if the wolves weren’t enough to worry about.
This city just wasn’t safe anymore.
I can never let harm befall Melanie. And I most certainly can never,everbed her.
Guardians are supposed to be celibate. That went out the window when my own boss decided she wanted to take her star guardian for a ride.
I was glad that part of my life was over, though, and now I could put all my energy into Mel.
