Brandon closed his eyes and leaned his head against the windowsill. Just for an instant.
“Don’t let me do anything, go anywhere…” he muttered, feeling Infusino’s shoulder supporting him, guiding him to a cot the Venetian unit had set up in one corner of the big, dusty room. “If I start talking in my sleep, wake me up.”
He lay down on the cot, his gaze focused on the ceiling high above, on the peeling remnants of painted angels who seemed to laugh down at him.
Around him, a haze began to gather as he drifted…
Not into the usual scene of his recurring nightmare. Only a blackness, shrouded in fog.
He dug in his pocket, touched his watch.
I’m dreaming.
Out of the mist, she came sliding into concrete form, faster than she ever had before. Like a bolt of lightning streaking down from the sky, she landed on solid ground, striking the earth ten feet away from him. Striding toward him with a storm flying around her, she was all long legs, flying hair and snapping green eyes.
“
You
. Where the hell are my Gatekeepers? I want them back,” she demanded, marching forward to grab him by the front of his shirt. She held it in her fist, staring up at him, fury swirling in those green eyes.
“Forget it,” he said coolly, staring down at her.
“You don’t think I can
make
it happen?” she said, lifting her chin a notch. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, angel. I’ll make you come like you never have before, not even in your wildest dreams.”
He pried his shirt out of her fist, shook his head and pushed her away. “That’s a kind offer, but I think I’ll have to refuse.”
She ran her hand down his body, fingers skimming lightly down to the waistband of his jeans.
“You don’t even know what you want,” she said. Her voice was a smooth purr that washed over him. “A man like you has probably never had the opportunity to explore his own desires. There are things I can offer you. You could have anything you want. You could live in a mansion much larger than my palace if you wanted. Drive a fleet of exotic cars. Own a yacht. Have women dangling off you at all moments. Women like me.”
At the last word, he flinched, although only very slightly. And then he froze, kicking himself for reacting, hoping she hadn’t noticed. But of course, she had.
“What’s wrong, big boy? Got a monster under the bed? I’ll chase it away,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat and said, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You’d rather stand around and wait for your recurring nightmare, then? Do as you wish.” She flicked her hand at him, dismissive. “If I were you, I’d rather take my chances with the unknown than stand around waiting to get shot.”
“Who told you about that?” he demanded.
“Just a good guess. But
vediamo…
‘let’s see.’ I already guessed during the fireworks that you were a gunshot victim. And the way you cower and hesitate ever so slightly when you enter certain alleyways…well.”
“And the dream?”
She lowered her lashes, masking her eyes for a moment. “That part was a complete shot in the dark, so to speak.”
“You’re the only one who has ever figured it out,” he said, not quite knowing why he was telling her. “Other than Michael, you’re the only one who knows.”
“Perhaps I’m the only one who cares,” she purred. “Come, let me take that pain away,” she said, drawing away, sliding her fingertips down his arm. “Come with me.”
“I’ll keep my pain, thank you very much,” he said, wanting to reach out and grab her.
“If you won’t cooperate, that’s fine. I don’t need your permission. Where did we leave off the last time we were together?” she said, moving up against him. “As I recall, we were standing in a doorway near San Marco’s when your boss interrupted us.”
Around them, the dark mist began to solidify, the scene around them crystallizing into the place where they had stood last night. She pressed herself against him, backing
him
into the door this time.
“This is how it was, no?” she purred, smoothing her palm down the length of his torso.
“Knock it off,” he growled, grasping her wrist and attempting to hold her at arm’s length. Trying to remind himself of Michael’s warning. “Not like this.”
She paused, relenting a little. “What do you want, then? You angels are so bland. Your deepest, darkest sexual fantasy is probably a threesome in a haystack with couple of cowgirls. Let me show you the possibilities of what you can experience.”
Around them, the environment dissolved, the colors of Venice blending into a whirl.
When the scene began to solidify, they were on a stretch of beach that curved into a long, deserted crescent, rimmed by palm trees. Two girls, a blonde and a redhead, frolicked topless in the ocean, beckoning to him from the waves. When he made no move to join them, they came out of the water, giggling as they walked toward him, their breasts sparkling with seawater.
“This is not my fantasy,” he ground out.
Luciana tilted her head to one side, her eyes poring over him. “Really? What do you want? More girls?”
Out of nowhere, a few more women appeared in the surf.
Brandon crossed his arms, making no effort to move toward them.
The scene shifted around them again. This time, Luciana had taken him to a sumptuous bedroom, with a woman and two men on a bed. The men were fit and well muscled, and they smiled invitingly as they saw Brandon.
“Why not come join us?” said the man.
“Or I could leave you boys alone, if you prefer,” said the woman.
Luciana lingered in the background, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
“Sorry, wrong again,” Brandon said.
“What do you want, then?” Luciana said, frustrated. “Tell me.”
All I want is you,
he thought.
The words, not spoken aloud, hung in the air between them, as visible as if they had been written in black and white. Shouted as loudly as if they had been screamed through a megaphone. Those words terrified her, he knew. Which was why she had tried to put so many people, so many creatures of pleasure between them tonight.
“Are you afraid of what will happen if we’re alone together, just the two of us? Like it was last time?”
When you pulled away?
“Of…of course not,” she said. But she was trembling, almost imperceptibly.
“I’ve had enough,” he told her. “Take me back to Venice.”
“Va bene,”
she said.
She swallowed. Something in those green eyes of hers seemed to waver in her resolve.
Once again, the scene around them shifted. And as it solidified, Brandon’s heart began to pound so hard it almost broke through the confines of his chest.
When he looked down, the ground was at least three hundred feet below him.
And he was dangling in midair.
Chapter Ten
T
he view at the top of the Campanile at midnight never failed to inspire.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he said, gripping his chest with one hand.
With the other, he clutched the brick ledge of the bell tower that had finally materialized.
“Wasn’t that fun?” she said brightly. “Almost like flying.”
“Where are we?” he asked, still dazed.
“Back in Venice,” she said into the breeze.
And Venice itself is half the seduction
.
Below, the five domes of San Marco’s Basilica glowed white in the moonlight. The curving, brown-roofed labyrinth of streets wound for miles around them. Where the city ended at the lip of the sea, the dark Adriatic stretched into the infinity of night. Overhead, the stars glittered, a brilliant canopy set against the black velvet sky.
Venice in the aggregate was more impressive than any single church or palace, no matter how architecturally stunning. More beautiful than any one painting, sculpture or jewel. More breathtaking than any individual violin concerto, dance, glass of wine or dish of risotto.
“We are at the top of the most famous bell tower in the city,” she said. “This is where Galileo first demonstrated his telescope to the Doge, more than four hundred years ago.”
Brandon did not look impressed. He leaned out over the edge of the tall brick structure, looked down at the rectangle of the empty Piazza San Marco below and asked, “How do we get down?”
“Right now, we don’t,” she said. “Just enjoy the view. Almost nobody gets to come up here at this hour of night.”
It was true that tourists were not allowed here after the official hours of operation.
But some of Luciana’s most prized victims had been treated to this extraordinary late-night view. And every victim she had ever brought here had been impressed by the thrill of the observation platform and the massive iron bells hanging above, at this forbidden time of night. When each of those victims had died, each had departed his or her human life after a unique experience that only Luciana could offer them.
Brandon did not seem to appreciate the privilege.
No matter. She would
make
him appreciate it.
She launched into the same story she fed every victim she brought here.
“This is the special place I like to come to by myself, late at night, when I want to escape the world,” she told him, peering up at him with an appealingly shy glance. “When I want to be alone. To clear my head, and to enjoy the beauty of Venice.”
“So you’ve never been up here with another man?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she lied, adding a tiny flutter of her eyelashes for effect.
“Of course you have.” His mouth twisted into a slow smile. “The question is, how many?”
“Why do you bother asking questions if you already know the answers?” she said, annoyed.
“At least there are only two of us here right now,” he said, the smile twisting a little farther. “I expected there to be another orgy.”
“There’s nobody here except the two of us,” she said.
She kept her mouth shut, and thought about the golden weather vane on top of the Campanile. In the shape of the Archangel Gabriel. She had always loved the irony of conducting her seductions watched by the figures of angels and saints crowding the city. But Brandon didn’t need to know about that. Not now.
The wind swept through her hair. For a moment, she almost believed her own illusion. Almost fell into her own trap. Into believing that they were a pair of star-crossed lovers, escaping the impossibility of a situation. Not angel and demon. Not sworn enemies, sent to hunt each other down.
We can’t be both enemies and lovers,
she realized.
It’s one or the other. We must choose
.
“Think of how beautiful your existence could be. You could live in splendor like this all the time,” she said, trailing her fingertips down his chest. “You could travel the world. Own a pied-à-terre in London or Paris, in Hong Kong or Dubai. A Maserati or a Ferrari. The possibilities are limitless. You’re so much more than just a supervisor at the Company of Amateurs. You could be an Archdemon.”
Beneath her fingertips, she felt his entire body tense, steel ready to blow.
“Don’t push me. There’s nothing in this world that I want,” he ground out.
“Isn’t there?” she said, looking up at him.
He shook his head, but she could see the lie in those gray eyes of his.
“
Mi arrendo
—‘I give up.’ Tell me what you want. Just whisper it in my ear,” she said.
He leaned in close, paused before whispering a single word in her ear. “Enough.”
But he did not pull away. Instead, he drew her earlobe into his mouth. The softness of his tongue along her sensitive lobe was astonishing. She leaned toward him, the hard muscle of his chest beneath her palms. His breath warmed her ear.
Against the side of her neck, he murmured, “No more games.”
* * *
Arielle sat outside the door to the room where Brandon slumbered.
Sleep.
The one thing Brandon had refused to do with Arielle when they had been together. While she waited for him to wake, she remembered the day he had first walked through the doors of her unit headquarters in L.A.
A day so hot, the thermometer outside Arielle’s office window had burst.
Brandon Clarkson had not been like any other neophyte angel. The moment he walked through the doors of the legal-aid clinic that doubled as unit headquarters, everything seemed to change. The clinic suddenly seemed impossibly small, as though it might burst like the tempered glass tube unable to contain the overheated mercury.
“Michael sent me,” he said, knocking on the door. “I’m here to join the Company.”
He was so different from any man she had ever seen. His shaved head, his impressively muscled physique did not intimidate her, but caught her interest immediately. Back then, he had only had one tattoo. On that first day, she had seen only the curl of a feather peeking out the neck of his T-shirt. Had figured that, like many members of the military and police, it was probably an American eagle tattooed on his shoulder.
“The air-conditioning broke down. I’m the only one here,” she explained, sitting upright to dab the perspiration from her forehead and trying not to drool on her mountain of paperwork. “Everyone else has gone home, or they’re out on assignment. There’s a repairman coming in a few days, so we can get you started later this week.”
She went back to work, expecting him to leave.
Minutes later, she felt a breeze cool the back of her neck.
He had fixed the air-conditioning.
“I’d like to get started as soon as possible,” he said, leaning in her office doorway. “If there’s anything you need a hand with, I’d like to stick around and start learning.”
And so she had set him to work.
Brandon would do anything asked of him, she found, and didn’t need to be told twice.
One week later, he had already completed his first official assignment as a Guardian, in a record amount of time for a fledgling angel.
He came into her office and shut the door.
“Do you mind if I show you something?” he asked, pulling down the window shade. “It’s kind of personal.”
“Of course,” she said, trying to keep a straight face as he removed his shirt.
And showed her the little star tattooed on his chest. A symbol of his first Assignee, a little boy with terminal cancer, whom Brandon had helped pass into the afterlife.
“Does this happen after every assignment?” he asked her. “I got it last night. I just woke up and it was there.”
Then he turned around to show her the massive angel, wings outstretched across the broad muscles of his back.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never heard of another Guardian with tattoos like that.”
A gift. From the divine. She knew that when she saw them.
She had already begun to fall for him… And yet, it was not the tattoos that had struck her, and not even the impressive physique. It was the man underneath it all.
Two angels falling in love. The makings of a fairy tale…
What had gone wrong, Arielle had never quite figured out.
Sitting in the heat of the ruined palazzo, she felt the moment he jarred awake.
Felt it, and she herself jolted out of her reverie.
When she opened the door, he lay sprawled on the cot, bare from the waist up, his ripped torso and arms adorned with those magnificent tattoos. He turned his head in the direction of the light streaming in through the open door. His sharp gaze fixed on her, as vast and inescapable as the sky before rain.
Oh, but he’s beautiful.
He blinked, still half seeing whatever—whomever—he had been dreaming about. She read the naked desire in his eyes. Saw it wash away, like a stain washing off a sidewalk in a rainstorm. Watched him avert his gaze, cheeks flushed with color.
What was he dreaming about?
she wondered. And as she watched him, she knew,
Whatever it was, it was not about me.
He stretched his big body, sat up on the edge of the cot. Behind her, a few members of the Venetian unit hurried in to bring him a glass of water, a clean washcloth, satisfied that he had finally managed to get a full night’s sleep after such a long stretch of wakefulness. Arielle tried not to stare at his sharply defined abs, or at the sprawl of tattoos, so many of them new since the last time she’d seen him.
She had lost the right to look. But perhaps she would win it back.
Somehow, maybe,
she thought as he pulled a shirt over his head.
She turned and went back out into the large room where the Venetians sat quietly talking amongst themselves. When Brandon came out, she told him, “We were talking while you slept. The Company has come to a decision. What we have decided is in everyone’s best interests.”
“What is that?” Brandon said.
“Our plan is to dispose of Luciana,” Infusino answered without hesitation. “Venice will be rid of that demoness at last.”
“Disposal? You’re convinced that’s the right course of action?” Brandon said quietly.
The Venetian supervisor nodded. “Two hundred years we have battled with this woman. You have been called into this fight just a handful of days ago. I tell you, it is impossible. Luciana must be returned to the source of all life. She will rest in peace at last.”
Brandon’s gaze shot to Arielle. “I thought you believed that everyone deserves a chance at redemption. Don’t they?”
She could feel her face flushing red. She did not reply.
“Perhaps you have become too personally involved with the situation,” Infusino suggested. “It is difficult to see clearly when we are in the thick of things. We all understand that.”
“No, you don’t understand. You know perfectly well that you need the approval of the Archangels before you start talking about disposal. They will never agree without the unanimous support of the Company. And I will never allow it.”
“We’ll see,” was all Infusino said.
The others went on about their business, although quietly and with their heads bowed.
Brandon sauntered over to Arielle, leaned in close. “I know exactly who is behind this. Make no mistake, you and I will never be together. No matter who you schedule for disposal.”
“But, Brandon, I…”
“Don’t you get it? It’s never going to work out between us,” Brandon snapped. “Even if Luciana had never been born, there is no way I would be with you.”