“Them’s fightin’ words,” he said instead.
She gave a careless wave over her shoulder. “I don’t want to fight with you. That’s why I’m walking away.”
Navigating through the boxes in the living room, she reached the foyer and made a beeline for the stairs.
“Turn left,” he said.
Eve turned right towards the stairs.
“If you don’t turn left,” he warned, “I’ll toss you over my shoulder and haul you where I want you.”
Exhaling harshly, she turned left and entered the family room. She drew to an abrupt halt on the threshold. Alec deliberately crowded behind her, pressing the length of his body against her back.
He’d scoped out every room in the house before deciding on this one. He guessed it would be her favourite, décor-wise. An overstuffed sectional sofa in soft brown and accent pieces in red and gold made the space warm and inviting, which was the way he saw her. He’d added the fire in the fireplace and the white satin duvet on the floor in front of it, which he had covered in red rose petals. Their first night together had been on white satin, and when he had returned to her ten years later, he had used white satin again. He’d found the sheets in her linen closet, and knew she would have bought them with memories of him in mind. She had haunted him the same way. He fell in love with her the moment he saw her and every day that passed, even the ones when they’d been apart, he’d grown to love her more.
Eve stared at the makeshift bed in front of the fireplace and felt tears sting her eyes.
This is Alec, she thought, swallowing past a lump in her throat. She saw now that his proposal in the kitchen had just been a way to bait her into revealing more than she wanted to. He now knew that she’d wanted him to ask her at least enough to get upset about the way he got around to doing it.
She should have known better. Alec wasn’t the kind of guy who jumped without looking, especially into something as monumental as marriage. He was a tender romantic, a man of grand gestures and thoughtful considerations. Reed was the one who had knee-jerk reactions to unexpected events and his idea of seduction was pinning a woman to the nearest flat surface and banging her to oblivion.
“I can nail you to a wall,” Alec whispered, nuzzling the spot below her ear. “Any time you want.”
She choked. “Stay out of my head.”
“I don’t need to be in there to know that you’ve been comparing me and Abel since you met him. You and I both know he’s too self-absorbed to be what you need, but being with him comes with less pressure and expectations. He doesn’t let anyone in, so there’s no chance of a real future, which means less risk for you.”
“Don’t analyse me.”
“I’m just saying what you thought the moment you saw that ring in your wineglass. I was in your head then.” He wrapped his arms around her and caught up her left hand. With a gentle tug, he removed Reed’s ring from her finger. “I’m a huge risk, because committing to me is forever and it means sticking with the Mark for the long haul.”
“Alec. .” Turning in his embrace, she hugged him tightly and listened to his heartbeat. “We have so many fundamental differences between us. You’re devout, and I’m. . not. You’re an archangel and I’m hoping to get out of this mess and have kids one day. I want baseball games and sleepovers and Girl Scout cookie sales and family vacations—”
“And I want you to have those things.” His warm breath ruffled the hair at her crown. “You know I do. But I can’t let you have those things with someone else, not when I know I’m the guy you want.”
“I can’t have those things with you. I can’t even have you.”
“That’s your fear talking.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re trembling,” he pointed out wryly, tightening his arms around her. “And I get why. You’re trying to distance yourself, so if something happens to me it hurts less.”
“Can you blame me? You have demons and angels of all persuasions gunning for you.”
“We’re not together now. Does that make it easier for you to deal with the risks of me being mortal?”
Eve’s fingers flexed restlessly into the hard muscles on either side of his spine. Easier? She didn’t want to let him out of her sight. “No.”
“I’ve regretted every minute that we haven’t been together. They’re all missed opportunities for happiness in a life you know is damned fucking hard.” His lips brushed across her temple. “After dealing with the shit we do all day, I want to come home to you and just be me for a few hours. Aren’t you tired of being a Mark 24/7 with nothing in your life to make you feel human? Don’t you want the freedom of sharing your life with someone who knows and loves you for who you are in your private moments?”
“I get it.” She’d been letting her life as a Mark overtake whatever was left of the mortal she’d been before. Her personal and professional lives were both being moulded around her goal to get her former life back, which — until now — had been only a distant possibility. She had a family: two parents, and a great sister and brother-in-law with two kids Eve loved madly. The thought of them growing old and dying while she lived for years afterwards was crushing. Just thinking of it made it hard to breathe. But was that selfish of her? Wouldn’t she be more useful to them as a protector than not?
Pulling back, Eve looked up at him. “You need to shelve the proposal for a bit.”
“Ouch.” He grinned, knowing her too well to take offence.
Still, she explained. “You’re mortal and until we deal with the safety issues around that, I can’t think about what you’re asking me.”
“I still know how to protect us. Taking away the power doesn’t take away the skill.”
Her thoughts rewound through the events of the day before, then rushed ahead. “Zaphiel took me with him to meet the head guy who’s in charge of cleaning up after the Fallen. Adrian. I just can’t see him missing a vampire in his own backyard, especially one living in a place like Arcadia Falls where the neighbours are unusually friendly. Adrian seemed too sharp, Alec. He’s definitely not someone I’d ever want to piss off.”
“You have to understand Zaphiel. He has a problem with the seraphim, so he likes to fuck with them, with or without a valid reason. He believes they’ve been given too much power, to the point that they’re encroaching on the cherubim.”
“What kind of power?”
“Like elevating a Mark to archangel.”
“You.” She began to pace, which helped her think. “You’re saying this is about the deal you struck with Sabrael for your promotion?”
Alec’s ascension to archangel had come at a price — he’d agreed to perform some unspecified future service for the seraph who had promoted him. That bargain gave Sabrael a tremendous advantage over everyone else in the angelic hierarchy: the seraph had at his command the greatest weapon since Satan.
Watching her, Alec nodded. “The only way to break free of my deal with Sabrael was to go higher up the food chain, but I had to be careful not to position myself as the sole target of retaliation.”
She understood. “If you went to God, Sabrael couldn’t take it out on the Almighty, so he’d have to vent his anger on you.”
“Exactly. When I heard that Zaphiel was coming to see Adrian about a recent Sentinel killing, I made sure Raguel knew that I didn’t want to be an archangel anymore. I figured he’d be only too happy to find a way to knock me down a rung or two and if Sabrael gets pissy, he can take it up with him.”
He was playing a dangerous game, pitting angels against each other to achieve his aims. And he was doing it for her. So he could love her again. She’d been so determined to keep distance between them, while Alec had been trying to find a way to close it. . even at the cost of his own dreams of promotion.