The Rose Witch - Chandelle LaVaun Page 0,37

he have a soulmate? At the thought, my stomach tightened and nausea bubbled up my throat. My heart did flips in my chest. He stopped right in front of me. That smoky scent I’d come to know him for now smelled like fog in the rain on a cold winter’s morning.

Up close, his wings shimmered and swayed like there was a breeze sweeping through them.

I reached out to touch them then froze. I peeked up at him and whispered, “may I touch?”

He nodded.

With hands that trembled for reasons I didn’t want to investigate, I ran my fingers through his wings. I gasped. They were the softest material I’d ever touched, I didn’t even know how to describe the softness. Like cashmere’s softer sibling. They twitched under my touch. A low pulsing energy radiated into my fingertips. Heavens, he’s an actual angel.

I swallowed roughly and licked my lips. My chest was so tight, I needed to step away to get a good breath. “So you were born an angel? Like in Heaven?”

“I was born fae,” he said with a rough, raspy voice, like my touch was affecting him, too. “In Seelie.”

I jumped. My hand froze.

“My mother is a high member in the Seelie Court.” He smiled a sly, sideways grin. “My father is, as we’ve discussed, Lucifer.”

My stomach tightened. His mother is a Seelie Fae, a court member. No wonder I thought he was an incubus. “Lucifer…the angel of death.”

“Samael is the angel of death.”

I frowned and pulled my hand back before I embarrassed both of us. “Oh…then…”

He shrugged. “The workings of the afterlife are complex and not meant to be understood by mortals. My father was chosen to oversee that process, and it is not always pretty.”

I nodded even though I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, except that he wasn’t going to elaborate. “But you were born Fae?”

He flicked his wrist and then a book lifted off the shelf on the far wall and floated over to him. When it landed in his open hand, he opened it and started reading to himself. “Yes. I was born and raised as a Fae, pointy ears and all. When I died—"

“Died?” My voice rose like fifteen octaves.

He nodded and flipped pages. “During the One Hundred Years’ war—"

“You fought in that?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” He looked up from the book and grinned. “The truth is that war was a war between Lilith and Earth, more specifically The Coven. The humans had their version of the war, which was provoked by ours. In 1453 I assisted Edward Proctor, son of angel Uriel, to take Lilith down. This is when I took her locket. Unfortunately, the Seelie King did not approve of with whom I placed my allegiance since he was on Lilith’s side…so he killed me.”

A strangled kind of choked gasp left my mouth. I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the heavy beating of my pulse below. “What? But how?”

He grimaced and shrugged. “When only one of your parents is an angel, you are born the other species. The only way to become an angel yourself is to die. So I died…and then I came back.”

“As an angel.”

He grinned. “As an angel. As you see me.” He gestured to himself.

Oh, I bloody well see you. Lookin’ fit as fuck – CHLOE. I blinked and peeled my eyes off of his body before I gave myself an aneurism. “And…um… the black smoke wings? And hellhound? Prince of Hell things?”

He shrugged and let go of the book and it floated in the air. “Being an angel of Hell has its perks.”

Light flashed and then his wings were back to the black smoke. The golden lines vanished from his skin. His white silky pants were back to black denim. He rolled his shoulders and all of his muscles flexed. He hadn’t put a shirt back on yet and I was not complaining. It had felt wrong to drool over an angel of Heaven…but this was a Prince of Hell.

No angel would wear jeans that indecently low.

I looked up and my heart stopped. His gold eyes were watching me, his pupils dilated. My breath left me in a shaky rush. His nostrils flared. The muscles in his jaw flexed. I licked my lips and his eyes dropped to my mouth – and stayed there. Heat rushed through my veins. Butterflies danced in my stomach.

The air between us sizzled and cracked, like electricity between metal. My whole body seemed to hum. My chest was