“I’m here,” his said, the words muffled against her lips, “but I might not be alive much longer if you don’t let me breathe.”

  Hope pulled away just enough to look into his dear, beautiful, smiling face, then started raining kisses on him again. “Then we’ll both die happy,” she said, between kisses.

  He laughed, and fell into bed with her, rolling her over in one smooth motion so she lay atop him. “More than you know,” he said cryptically, “more than you know.”

  “Where’ve you been? What happened? How did you get away?” Questions flooded her mind, and she couldn’t ask them fast enough, all the while staring down into his face, and the gorgeous brown eyes she thought she’d never see again.

  “It’s a really long story,” he told her gently, tucking a short strand of her hair behind an ear, “and I think—maybe—that there will be plenty of time for me to tell it. Right now, though”—his eyes slid from her face to her neck, where her robe gaped open—“I’d much rather make love to you.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” she told him huskily, shifting so that his growing erection pressed against the vee of her thighs, “but I have something to say to you first.”

  His breath caught as she shifted. “Is there a way you could say it really, really fast?”

  She shook her head, shifting again, just because she wanted to hear his breath catch a second time, and see the way his eyes darkened with desire. “I want to tell you how very, very sorry I am for everything I did to you . . .”

  “Everything?” he murmured, trying to reach her neck with his lips.

  “Well, not everything,” she amended, letting him nuzzle her neck for just a moment before dragging herself away. “I mean the way I got you thrown out of Heaven . . .”

  “You didn’t get me thrown out of Heaven,” he murmured, merely transferring his lips lower, to her collarbone. “This is heaven.”

  She nearly melted on the spot, but despite the enticing little nibbles Gabe was giving her, she was determined to say her piece. “I dragged you into all kinds of trouble,” she insisted, “and then I took shameful advantage of you . . .”

  “Take advantage of me again,” he urged, pressing his hips upward so she felt every long, hard inch of him.

  “You’re not helping,” she murmured, with a groan.

  “I don’t want to help,” he breathed, placing kisses on the swell of her breast. “I’ve done enough helping today.” His lips moved lower. “Now I just want to help myself.”

  “Gabriel.” With an effort, she caught his head between her hands and made him look at her. “I don’t quite know how, and I don’t know why, but we’re safe now. Charity and I are safe, so you don’t have to watch over me and protect me anymore.”

  Gabe quirked an eyebrow at her. “I don’t?”

  “You don’t,” she said firmly, even though she wanted him to. “You can go on and live your life without feeling like you have to babysit me anymore.”

  He said nothing, merely watching her with those deep brown eyes that she’d love nothing more than to drown in.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, swallowing hard. “I’m done being a burden.”

  “So you don’t want to marry me?”

  Time stood still.

  “What?”

  Taking advantage of her stunned state, Gabe rolled, flipping her onto her back and rolling atop her in one smooth motion.

  “I asked you,” he said slowly, “if you’d changed your mind about marrying me?”

  “You . . .” She couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t because of his weight. “We’ve never discussed marriage.”

  “Do we have to?” His eyes were on her lips, which suddenly felt very dry.

  “I’m pretty sure we do,” she answered, licking them.

  “All right, then.” He settled himself more comfortably, shifting so that his length and hardness settled once more between the vee of her thighs.

  She bit her lip, her eyes half closing at the sensation.

  “I want to marry you,” Gabriel said, matter-of-factly. “I want to have children with you, at least one boy and one girl, and I want to take them to the park and read them stories and tuck them in at night.”

  Hope’s eyes prickled, but Gabe wasn’t finished.

  “I want to take you on vacations and buy you a dog and see your belly grow fat with our child—”

  “Children,” she whispered, correcting him.

  “—our children, and I want to go to work every day just so I can come home to you at night. I want you to cook for me and laugh with me and make glorious, delicious love with me.” He moved again, just to emphasize his point, and Hope gasped.

  “I want to grow old with you, and watch the fine lines as the corners of your eyes deepen with age, and hear you complain about the silver in your hair. I want to kiss your wrinkled cheeks and hold your liver-spotted hand as we walk in the woods. I want to see you smile the first time you hold a grandchild of ours in your arms, and I want to lie down beside you every night for the rest of our lives.”

  Speechless, she could only look up at him, clutching his strong, broad shoulders, the shoulders that were meant to bear the weight of the world.

  “Now.” Gabriel tilted his head, giving her a lopsided smile. “Have we talked about it enough?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. “Yes, we have.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “It was so cool,” said Cain, to a wide-eyed Tesla. “Everything in the cave had like this spooky green glow to it, phospher-something—”

  “Phosphorescence,” interrupted Sammy dryly.

  “Yeah, that was it,” his son agreed, not slowing down a bit in the telling of his story. “The Leviathan was like this gigantic dragon/snake thing covered in scales, and he had all this like, treasure that the Nereids had brought him . . .”

  Unnoticed, Sammy rolled his eyes at his son’s bad grammar and constant use of the word “like.”

  “ . . . and he seemed really, really scary. At first I thought he was going to like, eat me, but he turned out to be really nice . . .”

  “Really,” repeated Sammy under his breath, but both the boy and the imp ignored him. Truth be told, he didn’t want to interrupt Cain any more than Tesla did, for he’d rather listen to a thousand “likes” than never hear his son’s voice again.

  “He told me to climb on his head and hold on really tight, and then we went whoosh through the water”—Cain emphasized his point with a swooping motion of his hand—“just like a roller coaster.”

  “Wow,” breathed the imp. “What’s a roller coaster?”

  Cain looked nonplussed, but only for a moment. “I’m not really sure, but my mom said they go up and down really fast, and that they’re a lot of fun. She said she’d let me ride one one day, but she never did. Anyway . . .”

  Yet another thing his son had missed out on during the nine years Sammy hadn’t known of his existence, and something Sammy intended to remedy.

  “ . . . pretty soon we reached the surface, and he just exploded out of the water! I mean, water just splashed everywhere! It was awesome!”

  “Awesome,” repeated Tesla, suitably impressed.

  The boys were sprawled on his bed, so Sammy moved to take his usual seat before the fire. Oddly, however, the Throne of Nothingness seemed a bit uncomfortable today, so he switched to another chair, one that gave him a better view of Cain and his friend.

  “Where you scared?” Tesla asked Cain.

  “Nah,” scoffed Cain, then shot his father a guilty glance, amending it to “Well, maybe a little, at first.”

  “I would’ve been scared,” said Tesla. “I probably would’ve cried.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Cain told him staunchly. “You’re braver than you think.”

  Sammy closed his eyes for a moment, wondering how it was that a child of nine could understand friendship in a way that his father had all too easily forgotten.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Cain went on, “Father says he’s going to buy you some tennis shoes.”

  Tesla’s gasp of joy brought Sammy’s eyes open. “Really?”

  Biting back a chuckle, Sammy confirmed it. “Really.”

  The imp gazed at him in awe, momentarily speechless.

  “A reward,” he said. “For coming to tell me about Cain’s foolish swim in the Sea of Sorrows. That did indeed take bravery on your part.”

  Tesla’s small chest seemed to swell before his eyes. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said formally.

  Samael acknowledged the imp’s thanks with a nod of the head. “You’re welcome.”

  “So anyway . . .” Cain went on to tell the rest of his adventures, though Sammy had momentarily ceased to listen. His thoughts were drawn to Gabriel, who, hopefully by now, had been reunited with the lovely Hope. He would return them to Atlanta, along with Hope’s sister, once they’d had time to (and here he smiled to himself) reunite properly.

  “Where’s Nyx, Father?” Cain’s question brought him from his reverie. “I wanted to tell him about the Leviathan, too.”

  Surprised to find that Cain wanted to tell Nyx anything that didn’t involve the use of rude words, Sammy shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, and began to wonder the same thing himself. Instead of summoning him mentally, however, he decided to stretch his legs and find out.

  “Do not leave this room,” he told his son sternly, then looked at Tesla. “Do you hear me?”

  Two heads, one cherubically beautiful and one demonically ugly, nodded in unison.

  “I’m leaving four guards outside the door just in case.”

  “Don’t worry, Father.” Cain stretched out on the bed, making himself at home. “I’m pretty tired right now. Hungry, too.”

  With a flick of a finger, Sammy produced a small table, on which rested a pepperoni pizza, fresh from the oven, and two large soft drinks. “Eat,” he told the boys, and ignored their lack of manners as they fell upon the food. There would be plenty of time to teach Cain the proper way to hold a fork, and today was not the day.

  Then he strolled from the room, knowing that—at least until the food was gone—he needn’t worry about his son’s whereabouts.

  Nyx’s whereabouts were another matter, however, but not for long. He opened the door to a nearby antechamber to find his right-hand man engaged in what appeared to be an extremely passionate embrace with his current lover, Pandora, who—by her enthusiastic response—showed every evidence of enjoying it.

  “What the—”

  The two sprang apart guiltily, Nyx leaping to his feet, towering over the somewhat disheveled woman who lay, half reclining, on a cushioned couch.

  “Your Majesty,” Nyx said, snapping to attention, “I—”

  “Spare me,” Sammy snapped, raising his hand. “This is a day for surprises, it seems.”

  Pandora, recovering quickly, merely sighed, twitching her spangled skirt down to cover her delectably plump thighs.

  “It’s not what it appears,” Nyx stammered.

  “Yes, it is,” said Pandora, lying back languorously, patting her hair into place.

  The outrage Sammy should’ve felt was replaced by something else. His lip twitched as he addressed his second-in-command. “If I didn’t know better, Nyx, I’d say you were blushing.”

  “Master, I—”

  Pandora began to chuckle.

  “She seduced me,” Nyx said desperately, casting an imploring glance down at the couch. “I lost my head.”

  “I’m thinking you were about to lose something else,” said His Satanic Majesty, beginning to grin. “It’s called your virginity.”

  Pandora burst into full-throated laughter, catching at Nyx’s taloned hand. He tried to twitch it away, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “Calm down,” he told Nyx, joining in Pandora’s amusement. “ ‘Needs must when the Devil drives,’ as they say, and I understand this particular devil quite well.”

  He turned to go, pausing just before he closed the door on the two. “There’s a name for it, you see. It’s called desire.” He gave them a satanic wink. “Quite irresistible, or so I’m told.”

  The next morning, Samael followed the sound of childish laughter to the library, expecting to find his son engaged in reading lessons with Pandora. The woman who sat there, however, with a child and an imp on either side, was neither plump nor dark-haired, but a golden-haired beauty who looked familiar. She was wearing an amber-colored gown that was far too large for her slender frame, belted with a gold spangled veil around her midsection. The gown was clearly Pandora’s, but there any resemblance ended, for the woman wore no jewels or makeup, her long hair falling casually about her shoulders.

  The three readers were deeply engrossed in a book, and didn’t notice him at first, so Sammy paused in the doorway to listen.

  “ ‘I do not like green eggs and ham,’ ” read the blond woman, in a lilting voice. “ ‘I do not like them, Sam-I-am.’ ” She put her finger on the page and tilted the book toward his son. “Your turn, Cain.”

  Cain, to Sammy’s surprise, read the next few lines, concentrating hard on the words.

  “Tesla?” She tilted the book toward the imp, trying to get him to read aloud, but Tesla shook his head shyly. He was smiling, though, keeping a knobby-knuckled hand over his mouth to hide his sharp little teeth.

  She sighed at him in mock severity, apparently untroubled by the imp’s ugliness, then read the next lines herself, interrupted when Cain and Tesla both broke into giggles.

  “It’s not that funny,” said the woman, giggling along with them.

  “But it is,” Cain cried, grinning. “My father’s name is Sam, and I keep picturing him eating green eggs and ham! Somehow I don’t think he’d like it!”

  The blond woman laughed, and Sammy felt his lips curl into an involuntary smile. Unused as he was at being the butt of a joke, he found that in this instance he didn’t actually mind.

  “Well, well,” he said aloud, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. “My taste in food is once again called into question. I wonder if green eggs and ham tastes anything like caviar?”

  The woman, who’d started violently at the sound of his voice, turned eyes as amber-colored as her gown upon him. Meeting them, he suddenly, unexplainably felt a flutter in the region of his stomach, and forgot—just for a moment—how to breathe.

  “Father,” cried Cain, leaping to his feet, and running over to catch his hand, “Come and meet Charity! Isn’t she pretty?”

  Charity, of course. Hope’s sister.

  She looked at him warily, not moving from her chair. Now, with her face turned toward him, he could see the resemblance clearly: the same hair, though hers was longer, the same delicate, fine-boned features. The look in her eyes was different, however, for there was nothing of the innocent about this sister. This woman had seen her share of iniquity, and had her defenses firmly in place.

  “Very pretty,” he said, agreeing with his son, though he himself would’ve used words like “beautiful,” “striking,” or “ravishing.” Charity Henderson was a fallen angel of an entirely different kind, and somewhere deep inside, he felt an unsettling sense of kinship with her.

  “Very nice to meet you, Charity,” he said, extending a hand as Cain pulled him forward. “My name is . . . Sam.”

  She rose from the chair, leading with her chin, an unconsciously defiant gesture he recognized quite well. Her hand was small and smooth in his, her grip strong. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said, her cool tone at complete odds with the warmth he’d seen her show Cain when she thought herself unobserved. “Are you a friend of Pandora’s?”

  Sammy smiled his most charming smile, unable to help himself. “Absolutely,” he replied, feeling curiously deflated when her only response was to remove her hand from his.

  “Well,” she answered, the wary look still in her eye, “any friend of Pandora’s is a friend of mine.”

  Realizing that Charity thought herself to be in Pandora’s home, not his, Sammy saw no need to enlighten her. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said. “Pandora’s been very good to me, and to my son.”

  “Aunt Pandy is awesome,” piped in Cain.

  “Awesome,” repeated Tesla, nodding his bug-eyed head.

  “Please”—Sammy gestured toward the seat Charity had just vacated—“keep reading. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Father.” Cain tugged at his hand again. “You promised to get Tesla and me some new tennis shoes.”

  “Indeed I did,” Sammy replied, vaguely irritated at the interruption. He found he couldn’t stop staring into Charity’s eyes, an extraordinarily rich shade of brown, streaked with honey. “But not just this minute.”

  “When?”

  Tesla, who Sammy already knew was smarter than he looked, distracted his son’s attention. “C’mon, Cain. Let’s play checkers. You promised to teach me.”

  “Okay.” Willing to be distracted, at least for the moment, Cain led the way to a nearby table, marbled in black and white squares, and began to explain the rules of the game to his friend; rules Sammy had taught Cain himself last night, just before he’d tucked him into bed.

  Charity, watching them go, glanced curiously up at Sammy. “Tell me,” she murmured, so the boys couldn’t hear her. “What happened to Tesla? Was he burned in a fire or something?”

  Sammy, his throat unaccountably dry, cleared it. “Yes,” he said. “I guess you could say that.”

  He knew that Charity would find out who he truly was soon enough, but to his great surprise, he found himself in no hurry to enlighten her.

  “Cain’s adorable,” she said, turning back to her chair. “You and his mother must be very proud.”

  Despite the innocent way she’d phrased the statement, he recognized a female lure when he heard one. The strange sense of uncertainty he felt in her presence eased somewhat as he realized she wasn’t as unaffected by him as she seemed.

  “His mother and I are not together,” he told her, well aware of what she wanted to know. “It’s just Cain and me these days, alone against the world.”

 

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