Rapture (Fallen Angels #4)(12)
Author: J.R. Ward

In actuality, he hadn’t smelled it yet, and he didn’t care what it was—

Breathing in, he froze. That scent. That…

“I’m glad,” she said, her hands roaming around his back and settling on his ass. “I wore it just for someone like you.”

Adrian moved away, his brain hurting. Or maybe that was his chest. “Yeah. Good.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Eddie was over on the couch, sprawled out, but focused intently, as if he were ready for the sex.

Just like normal.

Ad nodded in the direction of his buddy. “I come with a friend. How ’bout you?”

“She has a BF,” the redhead muttered, like that was a character defect.

“Sorry,” the other woman said.

Like it mattered. “Okay, just you then, provided you can handle two?”

When the chippie nodded like she’d won the lottery, he took her hand, and that perfume of hers followed them, making him wish the black haired one had been single and willing, and that Jessica Rabbit with the Goth makeover had been the chick with the boyfriend. No going back, though—it was just too much like work to find another recruit, and besides, this was nothing permanent. None of them had ever been permanent.

Goddamn flowery smell, though. It gave him the creeps.

When he got to the couch and sat down, the redhead made like a throw blanket, covering both his and Eddie’s legs, and, as she happened to be facing in the other angel’s direction, Eddie got to work kissing the hell out of her.

For a guy with no game, he’d always had a hearty appetite.

As Ad watched, and did some stroking of the hip and breast variety, he thought it was amazing how much power a nightmare could have over you. It was like all that imagined shit about Eddie had actually happened: that harpy sweeping in from out of nowhere and nailing the angel with a blade, taking the I-M out of immortal. Then the death, in the lobby of that bank that was not far from here. Then the suffering afterward, the sense that the purpose had gone out of the world for him…

Adrian frowned and wondered why he was talking to himself like it had actually gone down—

The redhead arched and parted her legs, clearly inviting him to play in her sandbox. And as he complied, Eddie took over working on her br**sts, pulling down the top of her black shredded something-or-other, being more aggressive than usual as he exposed a pair that were considerably smaller than they’d looked.

Just as Adrian was slipping a hand in deep, the waitress showed up with some fresh bottles, and she obviously was used to the kind of business that was being conducted: she didn’t bat an eye as she put the beers down.

“I got it,” Ad said, squeezing his wallet out of his back pocket and popping her a twenty. As she left, he glanced at the beer, and then shot a glare over at Eddie. “Coors Light? What the hell?”

The other angel disengaged from the lip lock and shrugged. “Watching my weight.”

Ad rolled his eyes and got back in touch with touching the meal that was about to be consumed. Moving his hands upward under the short skirt, he discovered to his surprise a pair of underwear with all the holding power of steel girders—and the sprawl of an army tent. What the f**k? Then again, he supposed Spanx was cheaper than lipo—

That perfume flooded back into his nose, suggesting that maybe it hadn’t been the woman’s after all.

Glancing around, he could see nothing unusual—

“I think you should do her first,” Eddie said, playing with those br**sts…that now seemed rather flabby.

And that hair. Once thick and wavy, it now looked kind of frizzy.

The woman smiled, revealing teeth that were crooked.

“Go on, Adrian…do her.” Eddie’s eyes were all but sparkling in the darkness. “I want to watch you.”

The woman took Ad’s hand and moved it back between her legs, rubbing herself against his palm and fingers—

From out of the crowd, a figure stepped into view, a tall, proud figure dressed in a white robe. As it arrived, the scent of the flowers grew so strong, it overpowered everything—

Eddie.

It was the real Eddie, standing true and real, unbowed and whole in the midst of a crowd of walking dead.

“Oh, for f**k’s sake. Just when things were getting interesting.”

Ad’s head shot around. Devina was beside him on the other end of the couch, for once wearing her true guise: She was a corpse animated, her flesh in a perpetual free fall from her gray bones, her grotesque rotting palms on the br**sts of the almost-pretty woman. The demon’s expression was one of annoyance, her loose lips and sagging jawline as clenched as they could get.

Adrian shouted and went to jump up, but the redhead held his hand in place—and as he struggled against her astronomical strength, she morphed into what she really was: a decrepit has-been, the illusion of loveliness gone as if it were no longer sustainable.

As he tried to pull free, a black stain began to creep up his arm, starting at his fingers, riding up his wrist, staking claim to his elbow.

Screaming loud, he jerked violently, but he was a fly stuck on paper, a mouse in a trap, a—

Eddie, the real one, the dead one, broke the connection with a simple touch, not on Ad but the redhead: Suddenly appearing beside them all, he just leaned in and put his forefinger to the harpy’s shoulder, and poof! it was gone.

As Devina cursed the angel, Adrian ripped free of the hold, his body falling backward off the couch, his eyes only for Eddie as his heart shattered, the loss that had really occurred coming home to rest yet again.

“Fuck you,” Devina spat at the angel.

Eddie’s wonderful face, that kind, smart, handsome face, showed no reaction to the insult. He just nodded over at the Coors Light and drawled, “In your condition, I’d be worried about a hell of a lot more than my figure.”

Vile epithets were hurled from the couch, but Devina did nothing more—to the point where you had to wonder what exactly Eddie had done with that ET-finger-move thing.

The other angel looked at Ad for what seemed like the longest time, as if the dead missed the living even more. “I’m never far,” Eddie said in a cracking voice.

“Ah, shit…don’t go,” Ad moaned. “Just stay here—”

“So f**king touching.” Devina’s black eyes were livid. “You two want to make out before he leaves?”

Eddie began to recede like he was a statue on a rolling platform, his still body drawn backward through the milling crowd, that smell of a fresh meadow going with him.