Page 2 of Angel's Smoke

Iron froze. All the moving parts knocking around in his cerebral space just locked everything up tight. His limbs, his muscles, his mouth.

Had she just . . . spoken?

The wisps of white ether merely continued to dance before him, like a puppy playing keep-away, once more cradling the sheet of copper hair that was the only defining feature he’d ever been able to make out. Until just a moment ago, when he’d heard her voice for the first time.

A deeply resonant alto with a hint of annoyance that was so hurried, it seemed she barely had the patience to get the question out. He replayed those three little words in his mind and couldn’t help but smile at the realization that tightened around his quickening heart. Heryouhad been spoken softly, barely even audible, but was still delivered with an air of indignation that he hadn’t yet answered her question even before she finished speaking it.

The corner of his lips ticked up slowly. “You’re a New Englander. From New Hampshire, if I had to guess.”

Her silence was the confirmation he was shocked to discover his soul craved. Shocked on a few accounts. The first, because in all the months of their now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t dance, he’d never once heard her voice. And the second being the literal gut punch of power blasting him behind his sternum that almost brought him to his knees once he’d heard her speak. But the blast was just as fleeting as the hope that had begun to flare in his chest.

His power. His full celestial power was there, knocking at his basement door like a boxed-away relic, and then it was gone just as quickly.

“How do you know where I live?” she asked, her words breathy and worried.

More indignation. More sass. But all of it was veiled under a blanket of uncertainty. And fear, if he had to guess.

Rattling breaths bellowed out of his lungs, which was a crying shame, because the poor things had yet to resume maximum capacity as far as the whole oxygen-intake thing was concerned. Iron squeezed his eyes shut and sank into the three-seconds-ago memory of what his body knew to be true. Yes, that roaring resonance within him was his angel fire. Hisfullangel fire. A power he’d not known since he and his brothers had fallen from the Empyrean, Heaven’s highest realm, way back before mortals had even been a thought.

Iron flattened his palm against his chest, his grip losing purchase against the sheen of sweat that had bloomed across his skin. Desperately, he scrambled to reach for it again. The door, the lock, whatever sort of fucking key would fit in the lock. Something that would grant him access to the very powers that would once again make him whole. When he came away with nothing, he gritted out a curse and opened his eyes.

The white ether had settled around slim shoulders now sadly hunched. Angled creases formed among the mist, sketching an elegant neck and softly rounded face beneath a mass of red hair. Iron sucked in a breath as more parts of his dream girl began to take shape. Pert nose. Dainty ears with adorable detached earlobes. A lower lip slightly fuller than the top. And then the wispy waves of his dream pulled his eyes lower, outlining her breasts, slightly rounded belly, and flaring hips.

Her eyes were the punch he didn’t see coming. Vibrant jade orbs blazed amid the swirling ether as they stared right at him, quieting his rising panic and replacing it with an entirely new preoccupation.

“I’ll say this again,” she said. “Who are you?”

A tremulous wonder finally illuminated what he’d been searching for: the key to his basement door. By all the motherfucking mages he’d sworn had abandoned him long ago, there she stood, as real as his secrets and as haunting as the future he’d never thought possible.

It had all been delivered in the form of a green-eyed goddess born of the fears in his mind. The answer to his fate. The solution to his bleak existence.

Iron straightened his spine, curled his hand into a fist, and dropped to his knee before her. In his periphery, the dreamscape moved slightly, pulling her farther back away from him, but he didn’t care. Now that he knew who she was,whatshe was, there was nowhere she could go that he would not find her.

The weight of his discovery sank heavily onto the back of his neck as he bowed his head. With equal parts fear and determination, he smiled as he closed his eyes and mentally stepped closer toward the precipice he’d been set upon.

Fate had chosen a path for him once before, and it had nearly destroyed him. He would not allow the mages to condemn him so again.

“I am yours.”

Chapter2

Anna Malone shot out of bed with all the grace of a startled scarlet-bootied baboon, complete with a wild mane and absolutely zero sense of what the hell had just happened.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. She still had a sense of some things. That man, for starters.

That man . . .

A surging heat pricked her skin, which was a dozen kinds of unnecessary, really, given how often she sweated through her sheets after a visit from him. Any woman, or man for that matter, would have to be dead for a solid century, at minimum, not to appreciate the finest specimen of brawn and beauty ever breathing. And for some reason, which she honestly saw no pressing reason to uncover, her stressed-out brain continued to give her the gift of his imaginary company each night.

Anna itched the back of her dewy neck, frustrated that she still had to sleep with the heat on this close to spring, and tried to shake out why this particular dream felt a little . . . off. He was there, like usual, but good lawdy, that was where the thread of commonality ended. There was nothing usual about what had just happened, and that was saying a boat load given how often her REM sleep cycle served up the same images every night on repeat. She’d never been much into the psychological study of dreams, but she’d read enough Stephen King to know that reruns weren’t normal.

Once her heart rate fell back into generally life-sustaining levels, she pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? Did she even know what normal was anymore? The past few months had been such a tumultuous ride of unexpected marvels, painful disappointments, far too many you-should-be-happys, and a buttload of doubt that it was no wonder she needed to fantasize about some bearded hottie just to make it through the night sans the depression that perpetually trailed behind her during the day.

Then, like frickin’ clockwork, her mother’s old words came flaring up, as they were wont to do whenever Anna was at peak exhaustion or stress, which, these days, thanks to her present condition, was all the damn time.

You should be grateful, Anna.

“Nope. Not doing this right now.” She grabbed the pillow next to her, still warm from sleep, and tried to smother out the ever-loving aggravation that always heated her skin further whenever her psychosomatic system was inclined to leap to her aid. “Ugh, just . . . no,” she mumbled into the pillow, wincing as the polyester scratched her cheek, before promptly falling back and burying herself beneath the covers again. “Too early for this.” Against her better judgment, Anna cracked an eye open. Yup, huge mistake. Numbers that had no business dangling an AM after their digits glared back at her in a muted red that, while somehow soothing during daylight hours, were far too forward and abrasive before the sun was up.

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