Chapter Fifteen
The air in the room evaporated, but it was nothing like when Silas’s angel brethren had attacked me. This was somethingdifferent. Something forbidden. A high-pitched ringing hung in its place.
After a pause, he fumbled through two words. “You’re drunk.”
But we both knew that wasn’t true. He’d seen to it that I was sober before tucking me in. The tension was a rubber band stretched so taut that a single movement would bring it to snap. One look. One breath. One word.
“I’m not,” was all I said.
He remained utterly motionless. I might have thought he’d become a statue had I not seen the way the tendon in his neck flexed as he swallowed.
I tried again. “Silas, we have something in common that no two people—sorry, no twoanythings—get to share. We were born into a world we didn’t choose. We did everything right until we realized it wasn’t right anymore. We’re with each other at the end of the world.”
“But Hell—”
“Has always known where it stood. Caliban always knew where he stood. Then there’s us. We were bent by our environments until we snapped. You understand me in a way no one else does. And it fucking sucks. I hate you half of the time for it.”
His quiet chuckle was half humor, half nerves. He said, “That doesn’t mean you want me in your bed.”
I twisted the sheets between my fingers. Azrames had taunted me not too long ago saying that if I wanted to fuck an angel, this would be the time. Fauna had made her feelings on monogamy perfectly clear, including offering to share her man when I’d stood in his apartment. Caliban had facilitated my lucrative career in sex work and had admitted, whether I liked it or not, that he’d taken no vow of celibacy apart from me. He’d been through relationships with me, listened to my brokenhearted cries over others, and pinned me against windows the nights of my dates and fucked me properly after I’d come home with another lover’s sweat drying on my skin. He’d said more than once that we were never bound for a monogamous white picket fence.
The verbal consent was there. My feelings, on the other hand…
The rational part of my brain argued that Caliban and I had never been exclusive. Not in this life or in the others.
A smaller, anxious voice told me that this was different. Sleeping with an angel was not like taking a baseball player to bed or making a few thousand dollars off an entrepreneur. Lying down with one of Heaven’s soldiers was not like my dalliances with mortal love. The same anxious voice thought that even Azrames would be better suited for solving carnal needs in a pinch, were I to turn to immortal resources, as he had the sort of head on his shoulders that wouldn’t make things weird or swerve in on someone else’s territory.
And maybe that was why I wanted it to be Silas.
I wasn’t the catalyst for the end of the world because I cared about prophecy or principle. I had chosen my role of my own accord. I’d spent my human life told what to do and who to be. I’d endured countless cycles tossed and turned in the waves of prophecy as a pawn for other people to push about the board.
I wanted to choose things because I wanted them, despite what kingdoms and realms and the universe desired. I didn’t want to belong to lore or divination or the Book of Revelation. I was my own person. And Silas wasn’t in my prophecy. He wasn’t in any of the cards or prompts or ulterior motives for my life. He was just an angel who’d chosen me—not my soul, not my potential, not who the world hoped I might be—butme.
I could barely see the cut of his jaw against the dim hall light. His face was a mask of shadow, expressionless against the gloom. “I want you because I want you.”
It was the minute that lasted a century.
Every cell in my body hurt as the tension became a tangible pain.
I would have melted with anticipated rejection or anxiety or fear that I’d fucked up if it were anyone else, but this wasn’t anyone else. This was Silas. This was an angel who understood my problems with Heaven so thoroughly that he’d saved me time and time again so that I could wage war against his master. He’d sacrificed everything to keep me alive. He’d betrayed his kingdom, his people, and he’d done it with no agenda.
Perhaps the world was burning, but he’d walk through fire for me.
A single step toward the bed took my breath away. He paused again, this time to see if my sharp inhale was one of regret, of jest, of anything other than what it was.
My heart was in my throat as I rested my hands on either side of me and slid backward on the bed. I looked up at where he stood, brows pinched in a hopeful question, and then came his answer.
A rush of spice filled the room as he joined me on the bed. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from an angel, but there was nothing tentative about the way he planted a hand against the small of my back and pulled me to him. Glitter flared behind him where I knew his wings were as his golden haloeyes burned into mine.
My head spun as if drunk on myrrh as he brought his face near mine. I thought he might kiss me, but instead, his lips brushed against my jaw as a low, masculine command filled my ear. I tried to pull away to look at him, but his second hand had a firm hold on my jaw, my chin, my throat, holding my face in position as he said, “I’m going to have to hear you say exactly what you want, or I won’t believe it’s real.”
I tried to shake my head, but he held it in place.
“No, there’s no worming out of this one. Say:Silas, I want you to leave.Get off my bed and go to the guest room.I’ll close the door behind me, and we can pretend this never happened. But if you want me to stay…if this is real…you’ll have to say so. Tell me:Silas, I want you to take off my clothes, to taste me, to feel you inside of me.”
I was going to pass out. I struggled to fight off the question. “Can angels have sex with humans?”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” came his answering growl, “but I’m not a very good angel.”
