Good Intentions (50 page)

how close this is into forbidden knowledge territory, but an angel’s status and purpose has an effect on what he or she is capable of. Mainly I just wouldn’t be as powerful.” “You’d still be you?” Alex asked. She nodded. “And I’d still be able to see you?” “Yes.” “Then I don’t care.” “You’ve really got to go to your next class?” “I’ve got a test on Wednesday. There’s supposed to be a review for it today.” “Can I come with you?” “We can try it. It’s a lecture hall , and people have dropped so there are seats now…but the teacher’s aides take attendance.” Rachel shrugged. “I can make myself invisible to every mortal except you just like Lorelei can. Just sit where there’s an open seat next to you. What’s after that?” “Uh. Photography.” “Oh,” Rachel said with an eager grin. “Right. With Onyx. Do you want me to make myself scarce for that?” “No,” Alex said. “Hel , no. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’ve just gotta do this biology class, and then…I don’t know. I already knocked out the other heavy classes today. I could probably skip the rest. I’d really just like to be with you.” *

“You will need to be able to list the characteristics of life. We did that on the first day. Also from our first class, you’l need to remember our little discussion on evolution and natural selection, as well as the readings on Darwin.” The professor spoke with good cadence and inflection, just enough to keep from being monotone, but she wasn’t trying to keep anyone entertained. Most everyone in the auditorium-style lecture hall busily wrote down everything she said. Sitting in the back of the hall , Alex heard Rachel sigh with annoyance. He glanced at her and couldn’t help but grin a bit. “Not big on Darwin?” he murmured. She took the sort of deep breath that enforces good posture, then released it. “We are expressly forbidden from speaking to mortals on that specific subject,” she said. His grin was undiminished. “Hot button issue for you guys?” “A bit.” “I dunno. Just your reaction might tel me plenty about creationism.” Rachel frowned and looked at him sideways. “The frustrating part about the whole issue is how unimportant it al really is. It’s a stupid thing for mortals to bicker about.” Alex was back to looking at his professor. After a moment Rachel said, “Anyway, the Norse had it right.” He blinked. “The Norse? What, you mean the Vikings?” “Mm-hmm.” “I know that one. Doesn’t it start with a land of ice and a land of fire and a magic cow being melted out of the ice in between?” Rachel nodded solemnly. Alex looked back at the professor again, considering what she said. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to lie to me.”

“The question is whether or not lying is the same thing as being sarcastic,” she smirked. Alex chuckled a little as he looked back to the professor. She was still giving an outline of the upcoming exam. “You will need to know the parts of cel s, both animal and plant. That means you’l have to know the difference between a cel membrane and a cel wall . You’l need to remember what a vacuole does. You need to know the difference between mitosis and meiosis and the phases of each.” “You’re hardly taking any notes,” Rachel observed. “Seems like a lot of this is stuff people should remember from high school. I had AP Bio in my junior year.” He glanced over to see Rachel’s quizzical look. “That’s, um…I should’ve gotten college credit for this class already. Could’ve, I mean, if I had taken the test.” “Why didn’t you?” “Jason got chicken pox a week before the exam. His parents were in Israel for a funeral. We’d been friends al our lives, so I went over to check in on him and bring him his homework and some comics and stuff. Keep him company. Mom was working really late, so I hadn’t even told her for the first two days, and then she was like, ‘You idiot, you’ve never had chicken pox, either,’ which I totally didn’t know, and so…um, yeah.” Rachel’s adoring smile fell upon him once more. “That’s really sweet.” “It was really dumb.” “Aw, I’m sure he’d have done the same for you.” “No, Jason’s way smarter than me. Jason would’ve asked his mom if he’d had chicken pox, and then when she said no, he’d have sent someone else.” “How long have you been friends?”

“Gah. Al our lives. Al the same interests. Geeks tend to cling to their own when they find ‘em.” “So you don’t really need to stay here?” “I might. She’s not done with the review yet, and there might be more. If this covers genetics, it’l kick my ass…where are you going?” he asked as she rose. Rachel pul ed away his notebook and moved the little fold-out desktop in his seat back to the side. Then she sat down on his lap, straddling him. “Right here,” she smiled. Alex’s eyes went wide. She leaned back a bit, stretching just right to draw his attention to her cleavage. Rachel’s white dress had just enough room at the bottom to al ow her to do this without it hiking up very far, but just the same there was an awful lot of leg. She shouldn’t have been able to do this given the lack of space, but her legs went right through the seats to either side of him as if they weren’t even there. Alex blinked in shock. She was very solid and very real against him, but she could apparently move her body right through solid matter. Rachel grinned down at him. “And now you know how I can fol ow you around everywhere you go,” the angel teased. She popped open the top button of his black shirt. Rachel leaned in, kissing and nibbling her way up from his col arbone to the side of his face. To make matters worse for Alex, she ground against him in exactly the right way to drive him nuts. He tried to breathe and hold still . Alex couldn’t really do anything to hold her without looking weird to everyone else, and he knew it. She felt so incredibly good that he almost didn’t really care. As if mocking his scholarly commitment, Rachel made a point of keeping her head low or to the side so that he could still see his professor. While the woman at the lectern droned on about diagramming cel s, Rachel’s hands roamed along Alex’s sides. He didn’t mean to do it, but he caught the eye of the teacher’s assistant, standing by the exit near the front row. She glanced up at Alex’s wide-eyed face and strange posture with something between amusement and surprise. She also crumpled up the post-it note bearing her phone number that she was about to give him. Alex looked away.

Rachel took the turn of his head as an indication to give more attention to the other side of his neck. His eyes closed. She felt wonderful. She was wonderful. He longed to kiss her, but that would look very weird indeed. “You’re vibrating,” Rachel observed with a whisper against his skin. “I’m shaking that much?” “No. I think it’s your phone.” Alex blinked. He twisted a bit, trying hard to get at the phone in his back pocket. Rachel giggled as he tried to manage it. finally, he got it out. Rachel settled back against him. There was a text from Lorelei. “The honeymoon suite is yours again tonight. Don’t worry about me. I know what you feel for her. Rachel will not come between us. I want this for you.” With that, he gave up on trying to think with his brain. “I’ve never wanted anything like I want you, Alex,” Rachel confessed into his ear. “I want to love you and fuck you for days and nights on end. I want to taste you and take you inside me and make you mine.” “Rachel,” he grunted. “Mmh, yeah.” She seized his hair to pul back his head so she could lick the entire length of his neck before she growled, “I want to hear you screaming my name, too.” “Rachel, I can’t take you to bed until you get off of me.” *

“There go al of my doubts,” Onyx said as Alex pul ed out of the parking lot on his motorcycle. His invisible companion rode on the back, holding him tightly and smiling. Fol owing the two out of the biology lecture without being spotted wasn’t difficult. They only had eyes for one another, and those eyes were often closed. They repeatedly stopped to throw one another up against this wall or that tree for long, hungry kisses between the lecture hall and the parking lot. “Why do you think she went invisible again when they got on the bike?” Onyx asked. “He’s only got one helmet,” Molly pointed out. “If she’s not wearing one, too, they’l get pul ed over. But the books al say that demons with mortal flesh are really durable. If they get in an accident, she’l still be better off than he is even though he’s dressed for it and she isn’t. If she’s really a succubus.” “Guess he won’t be in photography today,” Onyx frowned. “Well , what do you think?” “I think she turns invisible, she has an aura that’s conveniently so bright it can’t really be read, she crawled al over him while he’s in class and she’s dragging him away from his responsibilities while everything about him screams ‘I need to fuck right now.’ Yeah. I’m pretty convinced of what she is, whether or not she looks the way she did on Friday.” “Good thing I spotted these along the way, then,” Molly grinned. Onyx looked to her. Molly was holding up several blonde hairs. “Holy shit, how did you get that?” “Are you kidding? With the way they were wrestling up against the wall outside the lecture hall , I’m surprised he didn’t pul out a whole lock of her hair. So let’s go home, get out of these fucked up clothes and get to work. I think it’s time

we had a conversation with this chick.” * Carlos col apsed behind Lydia, unable to hold himself upright anymore. She shifted from her hands and knees to help him lay on his back with his head on the pil ows. Carlos would have been breathing heavily, but he could barely do that. He’d been in frenzy for hours, with his orgasms frustratingly further and further apart. For Lydia, that was delicious progress. “Baby,” he whispered hoarsely, “I need water. I need…” “I know what you need,” Lydia said, straddling him. She shuddered with the pleasure, enjoying both the sex and the rapid deterioration of al the rest of his strength. “Can’t we rest?” he asked weakly. With some effort, he raised his hands to her hips, wanting to urge her off. She grabbed his wrists and flung them up and over his head as if his arms were just limp objects attached to his shoulders. “You rest, Carlos,” Lydia reassured him. “Just relax and let me take care of the rest from here.” “That’s…’s not what I mean…” “I know, Carlos,” Lydia grinned. “I know.” It wouldn’t be long now. She loved this part.

* “This is happening really fast,” Alex said with a grin. Their voices in the elevator were hushed. Their body language, however, could not have been louder. Luckily, the older couple that had shared the elevator with them from the lobby had gotten out at a lower floor, al owing Alex and his angel to wrap themselves around one another again. “No,” Rachel smiled. She had both her arms around his shoulders, her head tilted up a bit to look in his eyes while her fingers ran through his hair. “This has been a long time coming.” “Maybe for you. You’ve been stalking me for days.” She shook her head slowly. “I’ve wanted someone to look at me and hold me the way you do since before the Tower fell . And I only wish I could explain, but you deserve this kind of happiness more than you know.” He smirked, then turned his head so he wouldn’t be laughing directly in her face. He didn’t want to seem like he was laughing at her. “What?” she asked. “You have to keep al these secrets from mortals, but you just dropped a Tower of Babel reference on me like you were there for it.” Her smile became sweetly irritated. “I didn’t tel you whether or not it was metaphorical or literal, jackass,” she said before planting a kiss on him that made him stop laughing. They were locked in it until the elevator stopped moving and the doors opened. Alex didn’t actually notice. Rachel had to be the one to break it off. At the door to the room, though, she stopped. A deep, unsure breath came in and out of her.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked. “I’m being so selfish,” she said quietly, closing her eyes in frustration. “I’m rushing you. For fuck’s sake, I’ve totally thrown myself at you when you’re in no condition to resist that sort of thing. You’ve got a succubus encouraging you to make every decision with your cock. Your life is total emotional turmoil. Alex, I’m crazy about you, I really am, but I didn’t want to—” He kissed her. Once again, she melted into his arms. The only sounds in the hall way were those of breathing, of kissing, and of the rustling of clothes against one another. “I’m not the only one here who deserves to be loved,” Alex said finally. Rachel’s eyes fluttered open. She held his gaze, but at the same time seemed as if she was suddenly dizzy. “You…” she blinked. “Do you mean loved like physically or—?” “I love you, Rachel.” She seemed stunned. Her eyes just stared at him. Her mouth made small twitches, as if she were continually about to say something but couldn’t. finally, she got something out: “Wow.” “It’s crazy and it’s too soon and I don’t care. I love you. I want to be with you.” He spoke with a calm, humble certainty that went beyond mere confidence. Her stare continued. “Open the door,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. He pul ed out the key card and slipped it into the door. The shift in his attention helped Rachel regain her composure. Rachel waited for him to open the door for her, then tugged on his leather jacket as she moved in past him. “‘Gosh golly, Rachel, when are you going to realize I’m totally boring and not sexy at all? ’” she mused in a voice of wry amazement. Alex threw on the light switches before he fol owed her. She walked only a few paces into the room. It wasn’t until the door closed behind them and he threw the deadbolt that she turned.

Rachel’s eyes were on his as her hands went to the shoulders of her simple white dress. Without pause, she pul ed the fabric down over her shoulders. There was no deliberate teasing, no gyrating or sultry swaying to music. Rachel moved only slow enough that Alex could watch as she pushed her dress down along her skin until it was in a pool at her feet. Every thought or worry Alex had about comparisons between Rachel and Lorelei evaporated in that moment. There was no primacy to be found, or even considered. There was no “more beautiful” or “less sexy.” “I thought I was happy a minute ago,” Rachel smiled. “But if you’re going to keep looking at me like that, I may have to go nude anytime we’re alone.” She came close to him, bathing in his awestruck stare. Rachel pul ed his jacket off of his shoulders and tossed it onto a plush chair nearby. He couldn’t do much more than look at her while she smiled back in appreciation. He fought to say something, anything, but al that he could manage was, “I love you, Rachel.” The angel grinned at him wickedly. “Show me.” * “Three layers. Triple checked. It’l hold,” Molly said. She put the magnifying glass down on the table. There were no cracks in their summoning circle. No gaps in the wax of the ritual circle at the center of it, or the salt around the circumference of it that enacted the summoning circle, or the circle of ash that provided added resilience behind that. “You know your lines?” Onyx asked. “I do,” Molly winked confidently.