“Does he still build Lego?”
“Puzzles. She buys puzzles from Mr. Trenton’s shop.”
“You’ve known this for a while?”
“No, just today. I can’t keep account of everyone in the world. I am not the all-knowing.”
“Are they happy?”
“Yes.” I didn’t tell Julia her mother was expecting a baby girl, but I would suggest she named the girl after my broken mortal.
“If he recognized me, what would you have done?”
I tightened my arms around her. “I would do what I do with all the Marked.”
“Even if I begged for his life.”
“Even then.”
“I want to leave this place.”
“Where would you go?”
“With Lucifer. I wouldn’t know anything. Wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t feel this lead in my heart.”
“You don’t want to go with him.” I lifted her face and wiped her tears, a single touch healing her broken nose and taming the swelling under her eyes. Poor mortal. “Don’t say things like that. You don’t mean them.” You wouldn’t remember me. I kept that to myself.
She swiped her tongue over her dry lips. “Where is Hell?”
I smiled. “Here. We fell. All of us. We were never meant to mix with mortals. The powers up there and down here aren’t supposed to mix. But greed, destruction, hate, and wars release energies into the universe, and there was nothing else for me to do but fall. And I can’t unfall, Julia, not when the sword is here, when my power is the pillar holding this world together. Not when I know Nephilim are the future.” I kissed her on her lips. They parted, and I kissed her some more. She cried. I didn’t. I held her, healed her inside and out so that she would forgive me someday, if not today. Today, she hated me. And while I healed her, I found out the most amazing thing. Her suffering broke my cold heart.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The next morning, I wanted to wake up at three in the afternoon, go downstairs, and make coffee, see if Daddy had fixed the lights in the tree house he was building for my brother, then ask Mom if I needed to go the store and get whatever little things she’d forgotten to get on Friday when she normally went to the grocery store.
Instead, I woke up in the morning with Michael already awake, golden eyes staring at me from across the pillow. The light in them seemed dimmer. He appeared solemn, even sad. But I knew better. This male was made of steel, rock, and willpower unlike any the world had ever seen.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
I touched my face. I was no longer in pain. There was no swelling. I awoke anew. He could heal all my wounds except the ones in my heart. Seeing my Dad going on about his life hurt me. An unreasonable pain since I was also happy to see him alive and well, and happy to learn from Michael that Mom and Nate had stayed with him. They were a family. I was a stranger.
“I’m grasping for things to be grateful for,” I said. “Do you think you could help me?”
“I can,” he said. “After we run.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I don’t joke.”
“Michael, I can’t today. Really, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just want to lie in bed and feel sorry for myself.”
“You will feel sorry for yourself after the exercise. I have a particular thing in mind today.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. I feel your exercise in my bones. But I’m taking a day off.”
“You need physical and mental training. If you lie here all day, you will cry and become desperate, go back into town, and try to introduce yourself back into their life.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“But you would, Julia, because you are a mortal. Your feelings matter. Your emotions run your entire life and influence all your decisions.”
“Unlike you, the coldhearted perfect creature of nightmares.”
“Exactly.”
I pinched my lips. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” There was something about the way he looked at me that made me run a finger over his chest, where I supposed his heart was housed. I moved down and pressed my ear to the chest. Thud thud.
Michael chuckled. “I do have a heart.”
My hand traveled down his abdomen. He took my hand and brought it to his lips. “It is two o’clock and ten minutes. I’m unclean and might die if I procrastinate the bath any longer.”
“You can’t die,” I said.
“I attempted a joke.”
I chuckled. “We can practice humor today.”
“We can. Out of bed.”
I groaned. Michael picked me up and leapt up, hovering in the air. “Hang on.”
We flew into the hallway and dropped down.
I closed my eyes until we stopped falling. Steam rose, and in some places, the water rippled with movement. Michael deposited me inside the baths, and the moment my body touched the healing water, I sighed. Michael somersaulted into the water, then rose and spun three times, splashing water everywhere. He spread his wings and shook them out, then dived. He swam, and, fascinated, I watched how his wings moved with his arms and the way he rolled his shoulders, taking special notice of his ass. His ass had dimples that moved with his strokes. When he stopped on the other side of the baths, only his eyes peeked above the water.
He stalked toward me, reached me, dipped under, and placed his mouth between my legs. He licked me for minutes, never needing to come up for air, and when my body neared orgasm, he flipped me over and bent me over the edge. He entered me, and I would have screamed if he hadn’t put a hand over my mouth. The windows reflected us back to me. He fucked me not with his body but by moving his wings. I stared at the male perfection that was Michael the archangel.
In the windows, his golden eyes locked with mine. He snarled. “You broke my heart, mortal.”
I widened my eyes.
His wings slapped against the water, splashing it around us. He pounded hard and mercilessly,
