Free The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 by Ivy Sinclair Page A

bond that would have given Eva just enough of a taint that she would have been able to get close to the gate.”
    “How do you know all of this?” Benjamin asked. “How can you be so certain? And even if what you said was true, you and Paige are not Eva and her Protector. You also are not bonded.”
    I was back to wanting to punch him in the face again. “If Paige has the relic, she has a piece of Eva’s life force, and it was cursed just like she said. That gives her two footholds into the ability to use Eva’s magic. I’ll help her figure out what to do.”
    “So this all rides on me giving up the relic to Paige,” Benjamin said.
    “That’s what you said you were going to do,” Paige said. “You said you’d help me so that I could defeat Eva and end all of that forever. I’d finally be free.”
    What happened next was so fast that my eyes never registered the movement. One moment Benjamin was standing to my left, and the next he plunged a knife that had appeared out of nowhere deep in Samuel’s chest.
    Paige gasped even as I moved to help the younger angel.
    “Go!” Benjamin said. “This is only going to slow him down. We don’t have much time. I’ll be right behind you.” He looked at me and somehow I knew that he was telling the truth. I wasn’t sure why or how, but Samuel was a threat and Benjamin had felt it was necessary to deal with him.
    I grabbed Paige’s elbow and thrust her body forward. “C’mon. We need to go.”
    “ No more than two hundred paces. Otherwise, you risk crossing a barrier where I cannot follow you.” Benjamin’s voice rattled in my mind.
    I moved us as quickly as I dared. I didn’t want the archangel spending any more time in my head.
    “What happened?” Paige whispered.
    “I think somebody just got a bit of a comeuppance, which is too bad because I kinda liked the guy,” I replied. I swept the beam around the cave walls. I didn’t have to be an archangel to have my spidey-senses go off. We were close. “You feel that?”
    “I don’t think you’d even need to be a sensitive to feel that,” Paige said. “It feels…oppressive. Heavy.”
    I hadn’t put my finger on why the air felt different, but once again Paige rescued me by capturing the emotion exactly. “We have to be careful. If we cross the boundary, Benjamin won’t be able to cross over, and we’ll be in demon territory without the relic.”
    Paige stopped and quickly swept my flashlight beam all around us.
    “What’s wrong?” I barely had time to catch my breath before she pressed against me and took my face in her hands. “I don’t know what’s about to happen next, but I didn’t want to go any further without telling you that I love you.”
    All other thoughts slipped away, and I felt as if the weight of the world fell off my shoulders. I knew what she wanted, and I was more than happy to oblige. I gripped her hips and pushed her back against the cave wall even as my lips crossed the short distance between us and claimed her lips as mine.
    She met my tongue with a hungry urgency of her own. Extremely pleasant memories of me and Paige with our limbs intertwined rolling around on another cave floor rose unbidden in my mind, and I felt my body responding. I love feeling her soft body pressed against mine. I broke off the kiss sooner than I wanted because I knew that Benjamin was about to show up, and I didn’t want to give the guy a reason to decide not to help us.
    I brushed my lips against her forehead. “I love you too.”
    We stood that way for another moment before I stepped backward. It was none too soon as Benjamin materialized from the darkness.
    “What’s the deal with Samuel?” I asked.
    “Let’s just say that I have trust issues,” Benjamin replied. His voice could have chilled boiling lava, which told me that he had probably caught the end of my lip lock with Paige after all. “We need to get on with it.”
    “Where is the relic?” Paige asked. “Do you know or