insistent with each moment. It concerned me that the Itch had appeared out of nowhere—most of the time it was a gradual change in my body chemistry. To have it flip on like a switch was disturbing.
And until I fixed my Itch, my body would grow steadily more sensitive, overheated, and needy. If I didn’t? Well . . . I’d never resisted for longer than a few days, because that way lay madness, pain, and death. In that order.
Not too irksome a fate if you had a hot man at your beck and call, and I had two of them. But since I’d just had sex last night with the vampire, Zane, I wasn’t due for another two days.
The east wing of the archaeology department was crowded, benefactors and their trophy wives circling around ancient vases and clay figurines, and commenting about them as if they knew what the heck they were looking at. I looked for Noah’s tall blond head in the sea of silver hair and poofy, frosted helmet-hair, but there was no sign of him.
I found him down one gallery hall, wine glass in hand, gazing at a large painting. Noah Gideon was breathtakingly gorgeous—not a surprise, given that he’d fallen from Heaven. His dark blond hair had been brushed into a haircut that looked perfect despite the intentional tousled style. His shoulders filled out his designer tuxedo, and I paused to admire him from behind. Because damn, the man had a nice behind. It made me quiver just to look at it.
Then I noticed what he was looking at and froze. It was a dark painting, full of shadow and light (chiaroscuro to the art nerds like me). A crumpled angel lay at the bottom in one corner, collapsed in a heap of feathers and rosy flesh. At the top, crimson heavens seared the dark canvas. Fall from Grace, the plaque read. It was a painting that one of the professors was restoring for the Smithsonian, brought out to display so all the wealthy patrons could see the good things we were doing.
And Noah was staring at it with an intense look that made me think that he hadn’t forgotten that part of his past, not by a long shot. As a fallen angel, he didn’t like to be reminded of Heaven. Originally angels like Uriel and the rest of Heaven’s warriors the Serim were condemned to live among mortals for all eternity because they’d had the bad luck to fall in love with human females. Exiled to Earth, they were doomed to have sex and give orgasms to their partners.
As curses went, I had no complaints (being the recipient of said orgasms), but Noah seemed sad for his loss.
Crap. How had I forgotten about that painting? Noah never talked to me about his past and how he’d fallen. I didn’t know how old he was (though I knew it was old) or if he kept in contact with the other angels that had fallen, or anything like that. Heaven was private, and I didn’t ask. I figured he’d open up on his own at some point.
From the devastated look on his face as he stared up at the painting, that point would be a long time coming.
“Noah?” I said quietly, moving to his side and slipping my arm into his. “Can we go now?”
He turned to me, the melancholy leaving his face so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it. “Leave? But I thought you wanted to—”
His voice died at the sight of my bright blue eyes and the moist flush on my skin.
I gave him a faint smile. “Bit of a problem seems to have cropped up.” I slid my hand down his chest, a blatant invitation.
His eyes grew darker, the gray turning almost black, then a deep blue within a second or two as his own desire flared to match mine. “You’re never a problem, Jackie,” he said in a low voice, and the husky timbre caused my entire body to tremble.
I automatically moved toward him, pressing my body against his and tilting my face toward his.
“Not in here,” he said, glancing down the hall.
Oh, pooh. I frowned at Mr. Propriety, even though he was right. I just didn’t like being reminded of it. “Where, then? It had better be someplace close, or I’m going to make a spectacle of myself.” I slid my gaze over him meaningfully. “And you.”
He took my hand and led me through the crowd, murmuring excuses to the