Page 8 of Seraph's Tears
Suddenly two hands, burning hot and strong, halted my descent. I barely held back my squeak as Gabriel pushed me upright again. One hand braced my shoulder, the fingers long and curved across my arm. Heat shot through my arm at his touch, chasing away the chill of the November day. His other hand had landed on my left breast.
My eyes bulged when I registered the hand cupping my bosom. It scorched through my dress, corset, and chemise, straight onto my skin and my heart beneath it. My mouth fell open as I stared at Gabriel the seraph, my master, the lord of the manor, and finally found my footing.
His eyes, green fire, burned as he stared at me. Gabriel seemed to notice his hand placement at the same heartbeat I did, for he froze. His gaze drifted down to my bosom.
My body responded. I felt lit on fire, a passion flaming to life I didn’t think existed.
His lips parted. His eyes fluttered, and his black lashes contrasted against the pale pinkness of his cheeks. His thumb brushed the inside curve of my breast. I nearly leaned into his touch.
He released me.
Ice doused my body. I gasped for breath at the loss of sensation as I grabbed my necklace and stuffed it back inside my bodice.
“Watch your step,” he growled, and whirled away. “I don’t need an injured human in this house.”
I stared as he stalked away, confused and fascinated and horrified in equal measures.
Chapter Four
Gabriel
I rubbed the ache in my chest, gritting my teeth.
Brown. Her eyes were brown. Framed by brown lashes on a milky face. Topped with that mousy brown hair.
Just brown. It wasn’t an abnormal color among humans—or seraphim, for that matter.
How long is her hair? Would it cover her breasts if she unbound it?
Grimacing, I stalked through the dry, yellow grass and into the row of trees. The bare soles of my feet felt every dry twig, every knob of root sticking out of the earth. I hadn’t felt desire in a long time. Since before I took my sedge on our last mission, before the fracture in the sky. And now I felt it for a human? It made no sense.
But the memory of my hand over her breast made my cock thicken in my trousers in ways I’d forgotten it could.
I couldn’t feel this way.
I didn’t want to feel this way.
I had too many things I should do, too many people I should be caring for. I couldn’t afford a distraction. Move past her.
I stopped by a tree and pressed my forehead into it, ignoring the itching at the base of my wings. Focus, Gabriel. You don’t like her. You don’t know her. She’s just the first female you’ve seen in decades who hasn’t treated you like a monster or a god. But if that was all, why did I feel like I needed her? Why did she entrance me?
I was even more pathetic than I thought—moldering away, useless to everyone—and desperate for even a glance from this human housekeeper. And what have you been doing besides moldering away?
What did I need to be doing? I kept trying to find a way home, but hadn’t had any breakthroughs there in roughly ten years. Several of my warriors had volunteered for missions to fly over this Earth, searching for any signs of other cracks in the air we could slip back through. I hadn’t heard any updates in a long time. Perhaps I should reach out to them.
Castiel still lived nearby. I could fly to him and see if he was in more consistent contact with our people.
Was there anything else?
My housekeeper’s wide chestnut eyes filled my vision again. Her hair, a soft brown, curled around the corners of her forehead. Skies, she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.
She was hungry. That’s what I was feeling the urge to do. She needed to eat, and I had no idea the food stores at the manor were so low. I needed to find food, but I hated going to the village. All those…odd humans in groups and families chattering and living their lives made me feel all the more trapped in mine.
Castiel. He tolerated humans better than I. Or perhaps humans tolerated him. I hadn’t cared much either way before now.
I flexed my wings, bent my knees, and soared upward. The muscle pull in my wings reminded me that I should exercise more. Just another thing I was failing at. I hadn’t held my sword in years, either. I hovered above my balcony, embracing the sting from the difficult vertical lift, then dropped gently. My bare feet hit the cold stone. I strode into my chambers and dressed quickly in shoes and a leather vest made for seraphim, then returned to the balcony and threw myself into the wind.
The moorland spread out below me and the gray clouds above me. For the first ten years I had felt claustrophobic, trapped between earth and clouds whenever winter weather rolled in. I yearned for the bright blue of the summer sky and carpet of heather because it reminded me of home.
