She’d died in that car accident. As had her parents. But…she’d become something more in death. “The scars hide the wings. When I’m in the mortal realm, the wings shrink in size and slide beneath the skin there.” Their small size made them little more than a ridge beneath her flesh. “When I go…home…” She didn’t have a home any more. Hadn’t, not in years. “When I go home, the wings return to their normal size.” At least, that was what should’ve happened.
He spun her around. Stared at her back. She knew he’d be seeing the tears that were now in the back of her shirt. When her wings emerged, they sliced through her clothing. An angel’s wings were soft, true, but they could also become razor sharp—depending on the angel’s needs. When they were threatened, angels always used their wings for protection. It wasn’t all about flight with those wings. It was about power.
Slowly, he turned her back around to face him. His expression looked so confused, so hurt, when he said, “I thought you died in front of me.”
Tell him. “When I was twenty-two, I did die on a street like that one. My mom and dad—we’d just picked up our Christmas tree.” They’d been so happy. Singing carols in voices that had been horribly off-tune. But that had been their tradition. Get the tree. Sing the carols. Laugh all night during decoration time. She cleared her throat. “A drunk driver hit my family before we could make it home. I survived for a little while, just long enough for an ambulance to get there, but I was dead before they could load me onto the stretcher.”
She saw his eyes flare at that.
“I died, and I was given a choice. I could pass as others do, or I could try to…help. I chose option two and wound up with wings.”
“You expect me to believe this?” Now anger snapped in his words as he stormed away from her and paced toward the small fire place.
She didn’t go after him. If she touched him…what would happen? Simone knew what she wanted to happen. I want him, once more. A memory to hold tightly in the darkness. But first, she had to make the guy see reason. “You’re a vampire. If vamps can exist, if demons like William roam the earth, then angels can be here, too. I mean, come on, you just saw my wings.” What more proof did he need?
His laughter was bitter. “I mourned you. I blamed myself for your death.” He whirled back to face her, and fear whispered through Simone when she saw the angry expression on his face. “When I lost you, I lost everything that mattered.”
That had been the beginning for him. The beginning of the end. Her fingers twisted together. “If I could’ve come to you sooner, I would have.” But the powers-that-be upstairs hadn’t known quite how to deal with her new condition. They’d thought they could help her. Heal her. Change her.
And all she’d wanted was to get back to Ben.
“Back in New York, I watched you for two years before I ever spoke to you,” Simone admitted. She wanted to confess all to him, but she didn’t know how much Ben could handle, not yet. “You’d buried your parents, and you were so consumed by your work.” A millionaire with his star on the rise. He’d been vicious in businesses. Willing to do anything.
Willing to destroy.
“You were going down the wrong path. I just wanted…” She took a slow step toward him. “I wanted to help you. I tried to be your conscience, whispering when you were doing things that could come back to haunt you.” Or to seriously bite him in the ass.
His bitter laugh came again. “You haunt me.”
And he haunted her. “But I got too close,” Simone told him softly. “It wasn’t about guarding you. I wanted to…to be with you.”
His head jerked up at those words. His gaze narrowed on her.
“I wasn’t human, but you made me wish that I was.” She would have traded her wings for him. Would have given her life, gladly, for him.
She’d loved him before he’d even spoken a single word to her. And when they had talked, when he’d kissed her, she’d been lost.
“You were jerking me around,” he charged, voice rough. “From the beginning, you were trying to manipulate me.”
His words hurt. Simone shook her head and took another fast step toward him. “Never, I promise. Ben, I’d never do anything to hurt you—”
He sprang at her then. His fingers closed around her shoulders in a bruising grip. “What do you think the last ten years did to me?”
She didn’t have an answer. No, she did, but Simone couldn’t say the words to him. Those years turned you into a monster. Everyone else saw the monster when they looked at him. But she still saw the man he’d been.
The man who’d come into the shelter that day, looking so lost and out of place in his fancy coat. For so long, she’d been whispering to him that he needed to help others. Help. Help. She’d entreated for so long, trying to get him to hear her, and that day…he had.
He’d given his thousand dollar coat to the woman in the corner. Then Ben had rolled up his sleeves. Simone had taken human form that day because she’d been so happy to see him. So happy for the change that he’d made.
Ben had seen her. He’d come toward her. He’d helped her make lunch for the people in that shelter.
And he’d taken every piece of her heart then.
“I was lost without you.” His hold tightened even more. “I won’t be lost again.”
“Ben—”
He kissed her. Fury was in the kiss, so was desire. With the touch of his lips against hers, Simone knew the white-hot passion that had surged between them before was still as strong as ever.
Maybe she should have pulled away. Tried to get him to listen to her story. But…
I only have an hour. One precious hour with him.
Ben didn’t realize the battle that was raging this night. She did. And if she could just show him the value he had. Show him that he was loved…
Her hands pressed to his chest. His heart raced beneath her palm. A fast, wild rhythm. She parted her lips even more for him. Kissed him with the desire that had remained within her for ten long years.
“I need you,” he said, voice rumbling, as he began to kiss his way down her neck. She didn’t tense when his fangs raked over her skin. There was nothing that his bite could do to her now.
She slid her hand under his shirt. His skin was warm, almost hot. In the movies, they said that vampires were cold. The movies were wrong.