Echoes and Embers (Rebel Angels) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wanted to touch her, to stroke her face with his fingertips and capture her sighs in his mouth. “We had something the humans wanted and they had something we wanted. It became an ongoing barter.”
    “What did the humans have that you wanted?” His gaze moved to her mouth, watching intently as she formed the words.
    Averting his face, he hesitated. Would his admission change the interest in her eyes to distaste or worse? It had happened so often before. The other angels treated his kind with mistrust and derision. They were outcasts, shunned.
    “Part of what sets us apart from the other angelic orders is our carnality .” He looked at her, waiting for her reaction. “Do I need to be more specific?”
    “Nay.” She shot him a sidelong glance, a teasing smile curving her lips. “Most angels are spiritual beings, able to take on corporeal form as their missions dictate. Impure thoughts are unknown to them. Humans, on the other hand, are fascinated by the pleasures of the flesh.”
    He nodded. Her summation was simplistic but accurate. So why was she aware of her sexuality? She wasn’t Grigori. He knew every member of his order well. There weren’t that many of them left. “Suffice it to say the Grigori share man’s fascination with pleasures of the flesh.”
    “You mentioned a barter .” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “What did you mean?”
    “We traded knowledge for women—young, beautiful women.”
    She stopped walking and faced him, her gaze luminous in the moonlight. “Did these women willingly participate in the barter or were they sacrificed on the altar of knowledge?”
    He laughed. She made it sound almost religious. “It was a very long time ago. I can only speak for myself. I never accepted an offering not freely—nay, eagerly—given.”
    “And they called your children Nephilim ?”
    Taking a deep breath, he tried to relay the information without reliving the past. It had happened so long ago, but the desire twisting through his body made it all too easy to recall. “When the practice began, we had no idea offspring were even possible. By the time the abnormalities began to manifest, it was too late.”
    “What abnormalities? Did you father children?”
    Pain tore through his carefully erected barriers, shredding his composure. Emotional defenses a thousand years in the making came crashing down.
    He hooked his hands beneath her arms and spun her toward a massive tree. Pinning her against the wide trunk, he held her suspended off the ground, her face level with his. “I fathered three children. Two died by my hand! Every woman I took was wild for it, not just willing. I can make females crave me, become so ravenous for my touch they will do anything to attain fulfillment! They came to me over and over until I was forced to retreat from their demands.”
    Her full breasts heaved against his chest. Even staring into her eyes her emotions eluded him. He longed for understanding more desperately than anything he could remember. Why her opinion mattered, he couldn’t begin to comprehend. But he wanted—no, needed —her acceptance. Would she think him monstrous, barely better than the Fallen? What his kind had done was—
    “I’m sorry.”
    It was not her whispered apology that called to him. He heard the suffering of a kindred spirit. Someone who understood pain. Setting his teeth, he eased his grasp on her arms, keeping her against the tree with the weight of his body. “What are you?” he whispered.
    “I’m Lady Alyssa of—”
    “Your nature is neither angelic nor demonic, yet you are certainly not human.”
    She touched his face, her fingertips cool against his flushed cheek. “I know not what I am.” Pushing her fingers into his hair, she leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. “I’m alone in a world gone awry and you have become an outcast among angels. Is it wrong for us to comfort each other?”
    “Wrong?” His short, sharp laugh was filled with