Silence

mouth, little tingles swimming under my skin. “You remember?”

“I heard myself say it in the memory, but I must have already known. I wasn’t surprised; I was angry. I don’t remember when I first knew it.” I pressed my thumb into the mark slashing my inner wrist. “But I feel it. There’s a disconnect between my mind and my heart, but I feel the truth. They say when people lose their vision, their hearing becomes sharper. I’ve lost part of my memory, but maybe my intuition is stronger.”

We considered this in silence. What Jev didn’t know was that my true parentage wasn’t the only piece of information my intuition was making a judgment on.

“I don’t want to talk about Hank. Not right now. I want to talk about something else I saw. Or rather, I should say something I discovered.”

He regarded me with equal parts curiosity and wariness.

A deep breath. “I learned that I was either crazy in love with you, or putting on the best performance of my life.”

His eyes remained carefully guarded, but I thought I saw a flicker of hope. “Which one are you leaning toward?”

Only one way to find out. “First, I need to know what happened between you and Marcie. This is one of those times when giving me full disclosure is in your best interest,” I warned. “Marcie said you were her summer fling. Scott told me she played a role in our breakup. All that’s missing is your version.”

Jev stroked his chin. “Do I look like a summer fling?”

I tried to picture Jev playing Frisbee at the beach or lathering up in sunscreen. I tried to imagine him buying Marcie ice cream on the boardwalk and patiently listening to her endless chatter. Any way I tried it, the image brought a smile to my face. “Point taken,” I said. “So spill.”

“Marcie was an assignment. I hadn’t gone rogue yet; I still had my wings, which made me a guardian angel, taking orders from the archangels, and they wanted me to keep an eye on her. She’s Hank’s daughter, which equates to danger by association. I kept her safe, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I’ve done my best to put the memory behind me.”

“So nothing happened?”

His mouth tipped up slightly. “I almost shot her once or twice, but the excitement ends there.”

“Missed opportunity.”

He shrugged. “There’s always next time. Still want to talk about Marcie?”

I held his steady gaze, shaking my head no. “I don’t feel like talking,” I confessed quietly.

I rose to my feet, pulling him up with me, a little dizzy from the audacity of what I was about to do. I was all slippery emotions inside, able to grasp only two of them. Curiosity, and desire.

He held perfectly still. “Angel,” he said roughly. He stroked his thumb across my cheek, but I pulled back slightly.

“Don’t rush this. If there’s any memory of being with you left inside me, I can’t force it.” That was half the truth. The other half I kept to myself. I’d been secretly fantasizing about this moment since I’d first seen Jev. I’d created a hundred variations of it in my head since then, but my imagination had never come close to making me feel the way I did right now. I felt an irresistible draw, luring me closer, closer.

No matter what happened, I didn’t ever want to forget how it felt with Jev. I wanted to imprint his touch, his taste, event the scent of him so solidly inside me that no one—no one—could take them away from me.

I slid my hands up his torso, memorizing every ripple of muscle. I inhaled the same scents I had that first night in the Tahoe. Leather, spice, mint. I traced the planes of his face with my fingers, curiously exploring his sharp, almost Italian features. All through this Jev didn’t move, enduring my touch with his eyes closed. “Angel,” he repeated in a strained voice.

“Not yet.”

I spread my fingers through his hair, feeling it flutter through them. I committed every last detail to memory. The bronzed shade of his skin, the confident line of his posture, the seductive length of his eyelashes. He wasn’t clean lines and perfect symmetries, and I found him even more interesting for it.

Done stalling, I told myself at last. Leaning in, I closed my eyes. His mouth opened under mine, his tightly reined control shuddering through his body. His arms wrapped around me, securing me against him. He kissed me harder, and the depth of my response unnerved me.

My legs felt wobbly and heavy. I sank into Jev, and he backed us slowly down the wall until I came to straddle his lap. Brightness lit up inside me, and the heat of it consumed every hollow corner. A hidden world opened between us, one that was as frightening as it was familiar. I knew it was real. I’d kissed like this before. I’d kissed Patch like this before. I couldn’t remember calling him anything but Jev, but somehow Patch just felt … right. The hot deliciousness of being with him came roaring back, threatening to swallow me whole.

I pulled away first, trailing my tongue along my lower lip.

Patch made a low, questioning sound. “Not bad?”

I bent my head toward his. “Practice makes perfect.”

CHAPTER 21

MY EYES FLUTTERED OPEN AND THE ROOM took shape. The lights were off. The air was cool. The most luxurious and delicious fabric caressed my skin. The memory of last night came back to me in a whirlwind. Patch and I had made out…. I vaguely recollected muttering something to him about being too exhausted to drive….

I’d fallen asleep at Patch’s.

I wrestled myself up to sitting. “My mom is going to kill me!” I blurted to no one in particular. For one thing, it was a school night. For another, I’d missed curfew by a mile and never bothered to call and explain why.

Patch sat in a chair in the corner, his chin propped on his fist. “Already taken care of. I called Vee. She agreed to vouch for you. The story she gave your mom is that the two of you were at her house watching the five-hour version of Pride and Prejudice, you lost track of time, you fell asleep first, and rather than wake you up, Vee’s mom agreed to let you sleep over.”

“You called Vee? And she agreed, no questions asked?” It didn’t sound like Vee at all. Especially the new Vee, who’d developed a death wish for the male race in general.

“It might have been slightly more difficult than that.”

His enigmatic tone clicked in my brain. “You mind-tricked her?”

“Between asking permission and begging forgiveness, I lean toward the latter.”

“She’s my best friend. You can’t mind-trick her!” Even though I was still angry at Vee for lying about Patch, she must have had her reasons. And while I didn’t approve, and intended to get to the bottom of it very, very soon, she meant the world to me. Patch had crossed a line.

“You were exhausted. And you looked peaceful sleeping in my bed.”

“That’s because your bed has some kind of spell on it,” I said, less testily than I intended. “I could sleep here forever. Satin sheets?” I guessed.

“Silk.”

Black silk sheets. Who knew how much they’d cost? One thing was certain, they had a hypnotic quality I found very distracting. “Swear you won’t ever mind-trick Vee again.”

“Done,” he said easily, now that he’d gotten away with it. Beg forgiveness sounded about right.

“I don’t suppose you have an explanation for why both Vee and my mom have consistently denied knowing you exist? In fact, the only two people who’ve confessed to remembering you at all are Marcie and Scott.”

“Vee dated Rixon. After Hank kidnapped you, I erased her memory of Rixon. He used her and put her through a lot of pain. He put everyone through a lot of pain. It was easier in the long run if I did my best to make everyone forget him. The alternative was letting your friends and family hang their hopes on an arrest that was never going to happen. When I went to wipe Vee’s mind, she put up a fight. To this day, she’s angry. She doesn’t know why, but