Free Dark Admirer by Charlotte Featherstone Page A

booth and spread his arms wide behind him. “What have you been doing since you’ve come to Earth?”
    Anael slid his gaze to Samael who was in the process of unbuttoning his long black coat. Samael’s gaze caught his, and his brother looked away, but not before Anael saw the way he looked at him.
    “Yes,” he said savagely addressing the horror in Samael’s eyes, “our brother has quite a way with dreaming up our punishments, hasn’t he? He took my voice and my face and made me a mute, tattooed abomination.”
    Sariel chuckled as he waved away the approaching waitress. “What are you complaining about, Anael, you fit right in with these twenty-first century people, they are all tattooed. Body art has become quite common.”
    “But not their faces!” he snarled, his lip curling in hatred.
    Sariel shrugged. “You are no longer beautiful. That is part of your punishment.”
    “It is not my lack of beauty that disturbs me, it is the markings themselves.”
    “So, you’re at last humiliated? I knew I would somehow bring you to your knees. You’re so vain Anael, that I knew you could not bear to have your sins catalogued for all to see. And really, as lovely as it is to rehash old times, I’m not here to discuss your punishment. Rather, I thought we might talk about your mission, and something else.”
    “Richard Stokes will get what he wants.”
    “Oh, I know that. You’ve only one more soul to find love for and then you will no longer have any reason to come to Earth.”
    “And you cannot imagine the euphoria I feel whenever I think on that little fact.”
    “You cannot bear it, can you? You cannot stand to see the humans take their pleasure. You cannot stand to gift them with something that was never meant to be yours.”
    Anael lowered his lashes and reached for his bottle. Yes, he could not bear to watch the mortals having sex, indulging in all the pleasures of the flesh that he had gifted them with. But what he hated more was the intimacy of it, the beauty of two bodies in love experiencing passion. He could not bear the beauty of sharing one’s life, one’s fears and dreams with another.

He had experienced sex, but he had never experienced the emotions, the connectedness of being with his lover. Was it because he was soulless that he had never felt such things? Was it because he was not human and never felt what they felt? How could it be that he could bestow so much passion to a mortal, but never feel it himself? Certainly he desired it—craved it—but it had never been near as satisfying to him as it had appeared to be to the humans.
    Despite what he had told Richard Stokes, his mission in this incarnation was to provide the mortals who summoned him with not only earthly pleasures, but love as well. Knowing that Richard was going to be on the receiving end of his gifts made his blood boil. Richard shouldn’t be entitled to anything but a cuff upside the head. He especially should not be gifted with love.
    Sometimes he wished he was just the Angel of Lust. He could handle that. Lust came easy to him. Love on the other hand was something that was forever out of his reach.
    “I want to talk about Eve Parker.”
    Anael stiffened at the mention of the woman’s name. An image of her curled up on the floor, reading to him assailed him and he felt the flow of blood in his veins speed up.
    He remembered cradling her in his arms, covering her with his wings. He remembered the smell of her skin pressed up against him and the feel of her heart beating against his palm. He remembered the first tentative flicker of need, then the consuming hunger, a hunger to be inside her, to know her, and not just carnally. He wanted to share something with her, but what that was, he didn’t know. He only knew that while he had wanted to strip her and plunge into her, he’d wanted something more, something deeper than two bodies fucking.
    “You took a wrong turn when you descended.”
    Shrugging, Anael tipped the