Envy (Fallen Angels 3)

Gloriously relative - the stretching was electric, and she spread her legs further, tilting her hips up, easing his way.

And then they were together.

In contrast to the fury that had gotten them to this point, everything now slowed down. With his slick tongue, he licked at her lips, the lazy laps tantalizing her as he waited for her to adjust. And then she moved her hips, curling her spine, creating an insane frisson.

The hiss he let out was followed by another groan. Then he fused his mouth to hers and got going, keeping the rhythm unhurried and even. Mirroring him, she countered his thrusts with her own, the sex gaining a momentum that took her at once out of her body and deep inside herself.

The house was quiet; what they were doing was loud. From the creak of the sofa, to the subtle rasp of the cushions, to their breath ... everything was amplified until she wouldn't have been surprised if people could hear it downtown.

Faster. Harder. Even deeper.

His body became a heavy, pistoning machine, and she held on, swept up in the maelstrom, gripping his back first with her hands, then with her nails.

She came with a savage burst so powerful, she was surprised she didn't snap in half. And he followed immediately, his hips spasming into her as violently as she clenched onto him internally.

It was a long while before the roar in her ears subsided, and as it did, the silence in the house rushed forward.

In the wake of the passion, reality returned: she became acutely aware that she was completely naked, and Veck was in her body ... and she had just had sex.

With the man who was her partner. With the detective she was supposed to be overseeing. With the person who she'd spent a number of hours with ... who was nonetheless a stranger.

A stranger she'd brought to her family's house.

A stranger she now had to add to her very short list of the number of people she'd been with.

What had they just done?

Chapter 22

Adrian and Eddie wasted more of the night in that booth at the Iron Mask, drinking Buds out of longnecks and turning down the women who trolled by.

Neither of them said much. It was like what had happened in the bathroom had sucked the conversation right out of their voice boxes. And another round of sex was out of the question.

As he sat beside his partner, Ad waited for something inside of him to kick in and get him back into hisoove.

Annnnnnnnnd ... nothing was coming to him.

The thing was, you could fight the enemy with your knives and your fists, but your own soul was nothing to wage war against, because there was no chance of winning that one. You also couldn't square off in the ring against reality, either - no target to hit. Unless it was a proverbial brick wall with your head.

So he just sat in the club, watching the crowd, drinking but no longer getting drunk.

"Do we go back to the hotel?" he finally asked.

As he waited for an answer, he was acutely aware of how much he relied on the other angel to be the voice of reason, to make the right decisions, to get them headed in the correct direction.

What the f**k did the guy get from him?

Apart from sex, that was - and tonight Eddie had proved he didn't need that service, either.

Waah, waah, waah, Ad thought. He kept this up and he was going to get his panty card stamped.

"What I really want is an audience with Nigel," Eddie muttered, "but he's blowing me off."

Ad looked over. "Have we been fired again? 'Cause no shit, this is not our fault. Jim's the one with the problem, not us. He gave us the boot."

And all because of that damn virgin of his.

Man, if he could do one thing over since he'd met the savior, it would be to have kept the guy out of Devina's lair. Yeah, sure, the Sissy issue was a tragedy. But what it was doing to Jim was worse. One girl, one family, versus the whole of the souls in the hereafter? Cruel math for the Bartens, but it was what it was.

Ad ran a hand through his hair and felt like screaming. "Listen, I can't stay here anymore."

The grunt that came out of Eddie was either agreement, hunger, or beer that hadn't settled well.

"Come on," Ad declared, getting to his feet.

For once, Eddie was the one who followed him, and together, they weaved in and out of the crowd, zeroing in on the door. On the other side of the exit? Rain. Cool air. Nighttime in a city that was no different from any other on the planet on an evening that was no different from so many they had passed together.

Shit, maybe they needed to get with Jim and ... chill this out. Nothing good was going to come of the savior fighting on his own.

Walking off from the club, they went in no direction in particular. Sooner or later, they were going to have to find a place to crash for the night: Unless they were welcomed up in Nigel's territory - and it looked like that wasn't happening anytime soon - they needed to rest. Immortal was immortal only up to a point when they were down here. Yeah, they didn't age, but they were vulnerable in some ways and very much subject to the eat, sleep, bathe rules -

The attack happened so fast, he didn't see it coming. And neither did Eddie.

His partner just let out a curse, grabbed his side, and went down like a tree, falling sideways onto the wet pavement of the alley.

"Eddie? What the f**k?"

The other angel moaned and curled into a ball ... leaving behind a shimmering smudge of fresh blood on the dirty asphalt.

"Eddie!" he screamed.

Before he could drop to his knees, maniacal laughter echoed up into the cold, wet darkness.

Adrian's response was delayed by nothing but a breath. He wheeled around and unsheathed his knife, expecting to face Devina. Backed up by a minion. Or twelve.

All he got ... was a human. A f**king piece-of-shit human. With a switchblade in his hand and the wild eyes of a junkie staring out of his shrunken-head skull.

More laughter leaped out of the man's gaping mouth. "The devil made me do it! The devil made me do it!"

The homeless man lifted his knife over his shoulder and lunged forward, gunning for Adrian with the kind of superhuman strength that only the crazy had.

Ad sank down into his thighs. His normal move would be to tuck and roll, and come up from underneath, but not with Eddie on the ground: He needed to keep his fallen friend in the corner of his eye ... because the guy was not moving, not going for a weapon, not ... oh, shit, not moving ...

"Come on, Eddie - shake it off!" Switching his crystal dagger to his left hand, Ad focused on the forearm of the possessed harpy, waiting for the right moment -

He caught the flailing limb on the downstroke, at the perfect second to change the switchblade's trajectory and redirect it back at the bastard. And the course correction should have been easy as pie, with the weapon making an arc that avoided contact with Ad's major organs and terminated in the gut of the attacker.

No. Go.

The wiry body controlled by the haywire mind slipped from his grip like Ad was trying to hold on to a gust of wind.

And that was when he realized that Eddie wasn't going to get up on his feet.

Like the harpy could read his mind, laughter bubbled out of the lost soul, sounding like piano keys hit randomly with a heavy hand, nothing but sharp, discordant noise.

The f**ker was practically flying over the ground as it came at Adrian again, knife over his shoulder, skin peeling back from that face that was more skull than flesh.

Ad had no choice but to focus on his attacker and protect himself. Eddie was as good as dead on the pavement if Ad didn't survive this and get him to safety. There was no losing this one.

Crouching down at the last moment, he tackled the piece of shit, pile-driving the harpy back against a building. As impact was made, a blazing pain above his kidneys told him that that knife had broken skin and gone in a hell of a lot deeper, but there was no time to worry about a leak. He reached up, caught that wild-card arm, and nailed it to the wet brick. Locking the limb in place, he stabbed upward with his dagger once.

All that maniacal laugher got replaced by the high-pitched scream of pain.

He stabbed again. And a third time ... a fourth, a fifth.

Somewhere along the line, it dawned on him that he'd become just as unleashed as the harpy, but he didn't stop. With vicious, jabbing power, he drove that crystal blade into the man's torso over and over until he stopped hitting ribs because he'd broken them all, and instead penetrated nothing but a wet sponge of desecrated tissue.

And still he kept going. No longer pinning the man to get control, instead, he held the bastard the loo he could continue stabbing.

The fun and games finally stopped when his blade hit the brick wall, the crystal carving its way into whatever building he had killed against.