The Darkest Passion. Gena Showalter
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chair for her. A lounge chair that rested beside his bed and was draped with pink lace.
Olivia wanted her own lacy lounge chair in that bedroom.
Envy is not a good look for you, she reminded herself. You might not have a lacy lounge, but you have helped countless people laugh and rejoice and learn to love their lives. Yes, she took a great amount of satisfaction from that. But…now she wanted more. Maybe she’d always wanted more, but just hadn’t realized it until her “promotion.”
So greedy, she thought with a sigh.
The rock-hard yet smooth mattress underneath her shifted and moaned.
Wait. Rock-hard? Shifted? Moaned? Jarred into lucidity, Olivia now had no trouble prying her eyelids apart. She jerked upright at the sight she beheld—or didn’t behold. The indigo haze of a rising sun and fat, puffy clouds were nowhere to be seen. Instead, she saw a bedroom with jagged stone walls, a wood floor and polished cherrywood furniture.
She also saw a lacy pink lounge chair.
Realization slammed into her. Fallen. I’ve fallen. She’d descended into hell, and the demons—do not think about them. Already, with only that small memory, her body had begun trembling. I’m with Aeron now. I’m safe.But if she truly was mortal, why did her body feel so…fit?
Another realization: because she wasn’t truly human.
Fourteen days, she recalled Lysander saying, before she lost all of her angelic traits. Did that mean…Could her wings have…
Biting her lower lip, afraid to hope, she reached behind and felt her back. What she encountered caused her shoulders to slump with both relief and sadness. No injuries remained, but her wings had not regrown, either.
Your choice. Your consequences. Yes. She accepted that. It was strange, though. This wingless body belonged to her. A body that would not live forever. A body that felt both the good and the bad.
And that was okay, she rushed to assure herself. She was in the Lords’ fortress, and she was with Aeron. Aeron, who was underneath her. How fun. So far this body had only experienced the bad, and she was more than ready for the good.
Olivia scooted off him and twisted to study him. He was still sleeping, his features relaxed, one arm tossed over his head, the other at his side, where she had been. He’d been holding her close. The corners of her lips lifted in a dreamy smile, and her heart fluttered wildly.
He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt, and the knowledge caused her heart’s fluttering to pick up speed. She had sprawled across the colorful expanse of his chest, had lain on those tiny brown nipples, those ropes of muscle and that intriguing navel.
Unfortunately, he was wearing jeans. His feet were bare, though, and she saw that even his toes were tattooed. Adorable.
Adorable? Really? Who are you? People were being murdered on those toes. Still, she wanted to trace her fingertips over them. She did trace a fingertip over the butterfly on his ribs. The wings curled into sharp points, destroying any illusion of delicacy.
At her touch, breath pushed from his lips, and she jolted backward. No way did she want to be caught molesting him. Well, without his permission. The action proved more forceful than she’d meant, and she propelled off the bed completely, plummeting to the floor with a painful thwack. Hair danced over her face, and when she brushed the strands aside, she realized she’d awoken Aeron.
He was sitting up, glaring down at her.
Olivia gulped and waved up at him shyly. “Uh, good morning.”
His gaze roved over her, narrowed. “You look better. Much better.” His voice was rough. Probably from sleep, and not desire as every cell in her body hoped. “Are you healed?”
“Yes, thank you.” At least she thought she was healed. Her heart had yet to calm, its continued erratic beat foreign to her. And there was an ache in her chest. Nothing terrible, as the pain in her back had been, but odd. Her stomach was even quivering.
“You suffered for three days. Any complications? Any lingering twinges?”
“Three days?” She hadn’t realized so much time had passed. And yet, three days hardly seemed long enough for her to have healed so thoroughly. “How am I all better?”
He glowered. “We had a visitor last night. He didn’t give me a name, but he said he would heal you, and I guess he was true to his word. He didn’t like me, by the way.”
“My mentor.” Of course. Healing her would have meant bending the rules, but Lysander had helped make those rules. If anyone would know ways around them, it was him. And an angel who didn’t like Aeron? Lysander for sure.
Once more Aeron’s gaze raked her, as if searching for injuries despite the truth in her claim. His pupils dilated, gobbling up every bit of that lovely violet. Not with happiness, but with…anger? Again? She had done nothing to quash his earlier tenderness. Had Lysander said something to upset him, then?
“Your robe…” he croaked, and quickly turned away from her, giving her his back. His second butterfly tattoo greeted her, and her mouth watered. What would those jagged wings taste like? “Fix it.”
Frowning, she looked down at herself. Her knees were drawn up and her robe was bunched at her waist, revealing the small, white panties she wore. He couldn’t be angry about that. Anya, Lucien’s wife and the minor goddess of Anarchy, wore much less on a daily basis. Still, Olivia smoothed the soft, flowing material to her ankles. She could have stood and rejoined him on the bed but decided not to risk either falling or a rejection.
“I’m covered now,” she said.
When he faced her, those pupils still blown, he tilted his head to the side, as if he were replaying their conversation through his mind. “Why do you have a mentor?”
Easy enough to answer. “Like humans, angels must learn how to survive. How to help those in need. How to fight demons. My mentor was—is—the greatest of his kind, and I was blessed to work with him.”
“His name.” The two words lashed like a whip, hard and sure, cutting.
Why such a negative reaction? “I believe he’s an acquaintance of yours, actually. You know Lysander, yes?”
Aeron’s pupils finally retracted, the violet irises once more visible—and drowning her in their irresistible depths. “Bianka’s Lysander?”
She smiled at the description. “Yes. He visited me, too.”
“The night I thought you were talking to yourself,” he said, nodding.
“Yes.” And he planned to return. That, she didn’t mention. Lysander loved her and wouldn’t hurt Aeron—yet—because that would, in turn, hurt her. At least, that was the hope she clung to.
Aeron scowled. “The angelic visits have to stop, Olivia. Between Hunters and our demons, we have enough to deal with already. Even though Lysander helped you, even though I’m grateful, I cannot allow the continued interference.”
She laughed. She just couldn’t help herself. “Good luck with that.” Stopping an angel was like stopping the wind: in a word, impossible.
His scowl intensified. “Are you hungry?”
The subject change didn’t bother her; it actually delighted her. He’d often done the same thing with his friends, moving from one topic to another without warning. “Oh, yes. I’m starved.”
“Then I’ll feed you before taking you into town,” he said, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and standing.
Still Olivia remained in place, but this time the immobility was because her limbs felt as if they were anchored to rocks. First, he was gorgeous. All muscle and danger and mouthwateringly colorful skin. Second—“You still mean to cast me out?”
“Of course.”