She moans, unable to do anything else but bow to the feeling as it slowly, very slowly subsides. And then, finally, when it’s over, it’s all Dez can do to crawl up and into Rafe’s arms, warm and heavy as his wings fall like a blanket over her body.
“You’re the best I’ve ever had, Desdemona,” he says, like he’s falling into a dream.
“You can tell me that when you finally fuck me,” she murmurs, relaxing into the deep, blissful embrace of his wings.
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’VE HADa night,” Eri says at two a.m. when Dez stumbles into the bar, legally sober but spiritually drunk on Rafe’s wings. She can still taste him, still feel him between her fingers. Her whole body tingles with the memory.
Flying back from the Veil, Rafe returned Dez to her tower window. They kissed in midair, his mouth sensational, his arms cradling her in the sky. Everything felt dangerous and divine. But then, climbing in through the window, passing back the golden scarf, when Dez invited him in, Rafe said he didn’t have the time.
In the months that they’ve been hooking up, he hasn’t yet taken her up on her offer to stay the night. It’s beginning to drive her crazy. What she wouldn’t give to roll over in the midst of a dream and draw him into her.
But Rafe has other plans, his own agenda that doesn’t include her.
She couldn’t sleep after he left, and since her roommates were nowhere to be found, Dez sought them up the ski lift, at the bar. And here they are, in Yael’s favorite booth, getting smashed like fools.
Dez has never needed a drunken gossip session more than she does tonight, but the bartender’s smile arrests her. She meets Eri’s dark, spellbinding eyes.
“I’m on probation,” Dez says. “They’re threatening to send me to someplace called—”
“Sheol.”
“What is it?”
“A place of peace and stillness.”
“You don’t make it sound so bad,” Dez says.
Eri pours something into a martini glass, rose-colored on the bottom, violet on the top. She slides it toward Dez. “Don’t let them send you there. You have too many important things to do.”
“The films?”
“Bigger.”
“What are you talking about?”
Eri raises an eyebrow. “Your boyfriend’s stitches in the Veil won’t hold forever.”
“You know about the tears? Rafe said—”
“A word of advice?” Eri says, wiping down the bar. “Pay as much attention to what Rafe doesn’t say as you pay to what he does say.”
And then, before Dez can press her further, Eri waves at a crowd of angels coming into the bar.
“Here,” Eri whispers, setting a small white pill on the bar in front of Dez.
“What’s this?”
“Soma compound in capsule form,” Eri says, leaning in. “If it comes down to it, take this before you let them send your soul to Sheol. It’ll buy you time to get free.”
Then she turns away to make the angels’ drinks.
Unsettled, Dez shoves the pill into her pocket, takes a breath, and carries her cocktail to her roommates’ booth. She finds them on thesame side of the table, doubled over laughing. Across from them is an untouched glass of white wine.
“Someone sitting here?” she asks.
“You,” Simon says, and moves the wine to the side. “That was Esther’s, but she was being dull.”
“Meaning she cried when Simon dumped her.” Yael snickers, taking a glug of Esther’s wine.
