Page 1 of Angel's Smoke

Chapter1

Iron had known a fair amount of temptation in his day but never the sort that had chosen to visit him on the whispers of butterfly wings. Or were they moths? No . . . Skippers? Those insects with the patterned wings but with those cute anime eyes that always took in far more than their size should allow?

Fuck. Did it matter what kind of horse his dream girl rode in on each night if he could never truly see her? Iron kicked out in frustration against the tangle of flannel sheets anchoring him to his bed in the waking world while the more vulnerable cerebral parts of him sank further into his dream space.

Every night for the past three months, he’d crawl into bed, resigning himself to the tantalizing show his worse-for-wear mind would conjure up. And every night, like clockwork, his feverish thoughts would manifesther. Well, parts of her, at any rate.

It began when Iron had officially taken over as foreman for building the new homestead for his brother Rhode, the former seraphim commander of the Empyrean’s legion of spying angels, and his brother’s soul bond, Neela. And by taken over, he meant thrown himself into a project that would mentally and physically exhaust him to the point that his body had no choice but to tune out the hard truths of his reality and thoroughly pummel his tired ass into the mattress. Okay, so perhaps he wasn’texactlyfollowing the tenets of avoidance coping, but one didn’t get to be an immortal angel as old as him without learning how to break the rules that needed breaking.

Too bad fate, like always, was a fickle bitch and would sooner yank the spark plug out of his car just so he could learn how to get himself back on the road rather than road flare that journey for him.

Suffice it to say, Iron needed the life lessons and reminders of his solemn circumstances about as much as mortals needed juice cleanses and food detoxes. Last he checked, humans still possessed livers and kidneys, but far be it for him to point out the functions of their own goddamn anatomy when he could barely keep his head straight.

Every single one of his warrior sentinel brothers had become mated. Not just mated but soul bound. Anointed with their other halves and inseparable regardless of the reasons that had landed all the angels in this mortal prison in the first place. Fortunately for them, when the road ahead blasted a firehose of eternal uncertainty at you, it was always a mite easier to stomach the stuff if you had someone worth braving the unknown for to lose yourself in each night.

Iron’s limbs slowly stilled, finally giving over to that familiar heaviness that urged his muscles into their nightly repose beneath the sheets. The elemental magic of the minerals and metals within the great mountain he slept beneath had begun its ministrations, unstitching the day’s tension to allow Iron’s celestial powers to recharge.

A feat he was now also alone in, as the soul bond connection had finally unleashed his brothers’ full celestial powers after eons of magically imposed limitations while his own were still on a tight tether of daily depletion and necessary renewal.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

The reminder kicked around his skull with rattling recognition. It was always there. The stark otherness of his circumstances while the ones he loved the most healed and grew into the full family of warriors they’d always meant to become.

It was a vision he’d long ago abandoned for himself, no matter how comforting the appeal felt wrapped around his most private thoughts, where he permitted, on the rarest of occasions, his mind’s indulgence in fantasies.

Had he known what was coming for him, however, he’d have locked his mental palace up good and tight, as one would when faced with any sort of torture.

The first time the woman visited Iron’s dreams, he’d done what instinct had him do against any intruder: fight. His mind had always been a safe space, regardless of the terrors his psyche would choose to visit upon him. At least, if he had to relive the past, the elements of his torment would be familiar. The players, the souls, the demon charmers. It was a dreamscape crafted from battlefields both celestial and terrestrial, from blood and magic to more sinister parts of his existence. But it was always his, and it was always familiar in some way. After all, outside of a few notable exceptions spawning from chain restaurants, even bad pizza was still good, to a degree. He was content to exist, even if the existence came with a toll. It was a toll he knew, however, and one he’d grown accustomed to paying.

Until the night after their most recent battle with Cyro, the demon ruler. That was whenshehad appeared.

The first glimpses of her were always the same, and that was how he knew that nothing of the dream girl visiting him was by chance.

Fate, as usual, had its grimy hands under his hood.

Even now, as the heaviness of the dreamworld shifted in its opacity to reveal the spun silk of her hair that always seemed to reach for him before floating away, a new emotion rose to the surface: impatience. By the mages, even in his dreams, he was brimming with the stuff. Though he had no idea how, his body, both within the dream and without, still reacted to just the mere suggestion of her. Every muscle and tendon was strung tight, his shoulders tense, the coarse hairs of his beard scratching against his neck as his jaw clenched into a position his molars would curse him for later.

And then he felt it. That deliciously soft hair grazing across the inside of his reaching forearms, pulling up every single goose bump in its wake. Among the swirling white misty landscape of his mind, the delicate curtain of golden copper would always pool in the cruxes of his elbows, tempting him to twist his wrists so that the strands might sift through his fingers. But he couldn’t. He’d learned that lesson the first dozen or so times he’d tried, which was how he knew she was no ordinary dream girl and this was no ordinary dream sequence. Every time he tried to grasp the vexing creature, something would yank her away from him and dissolve her back into the ether of his mind.

It was a new type of aggravation, one he regrettably couldn’t smash into submission with his mace or disintegrate with the flames of his angel fire.

So he waited and waited as he did every time, until the female finally crept closer and grazed the skin of his arms with a brush of hair so soft and tantalizing, his breath caught.

Holy shit.

For the first time since she’d begun visiting him in his dreams, an outline of her form had begun to take shape.

Mages, she was so . . . slight, with her head barely tall enough to clear his rib cage, even if he allowed himself to stand at his full height around her, which he never did because, even in dreams, he knew how imposing his form could be to a woman. The mists around her steadily compressed into one slender arm, then another as small hands with dainty fingers rested on the outside of his elbows. The sensation of her ethereal touch against his skin was as odd as it was fleeting. A shiver of awareness thrummed through his body, coiling down his spine and stroking the secret part of him where his full celestial power had dwelled once upon an eternity.

And damn if he didn’t feel that caress brush across every nerve ending. Iron’s back teeth met again, and not for the first time, he wished he didn’t sleep naked. Which was more than a little bit ridiculous, right? We existed in dreams as our mind saw us. But right now, as her soft feminine curves coalesced before him, he sure as shit regretted the image he was presenting to her: that of a bulky and very nude heavily muscled male with a sleep-tousled rat’s nest of a mane brushing his shoulders, a beard a few days past a decent trim, and the most painful erection that refused to point anywhere other than at the dream woman before him.

Jesus fucking Christ. He looked like some goddamn NFL nose tackle who’d just wrestled a bear, sacked the startingandbackup quarterbacks for half a dozen plays, and then had somehow stumbled into the women’s locker room.

Iron exhaled through his nose and started to curl his fingers into his palms in frustration, but the woman let out a soft gasp and floated away, dissolving some of the form she’d begun to take.

“No!” he rushed out, knowing full well his plea would go unanswered, as his words always did. Iron tried to reach for her but caught only air. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean?—”

“Who are you?”

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