His smile was decidedly wicked. “That’s a legitimate question.”
Before I could say anything else, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the bedroom, kicking the door shut. Just after he laid me down on the mattress, I remembered something.
“Wait, I forgot to put the chicken salad away.”
He leaned over me with a smirk that gave me heart palpitations.
“It’ll be there next week.”
Hours later, I awoke to fingers gliding over my bare shoulder: slow, lazy, much like how I felt at the moment. Michael’s chest was a wall of solid heat behind me, melded against my back, a comforting weight. He leaned over and kissed the nape of my neck, his voice quiet.
“Oh, good. You’re not dead.”
I choked on a laugh, rolling my head backwards to look at him. “Well, that was a romantic thing to wake up to.”
He chuckled. “Sorry. It’s just that you were pretty out of it for a while there. I was starting to think I accidentally killed you.”
“That would have been one hell of a way to go,” I admitted, stretching my back. A few things popped in response, further relaxing me.
Michael nuzzled his nose against the right side of my neck, sighing. “I think I owe you and the entire human race an apology.”
I glanced at him again. “For what?”
“Well…” he said slowly, his face solemn. “Having experienced love-making for the first time, I am amazed that you don’t simply do it all the time, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.”
I couldn’t help it. I erupted into laughter, so hard that my entire upper body shook beneath the sheets. Michael had enough sense to look sheepish after his statement, waiting patiently for me to regain composure.
I wiped my eyes, kissing him on the nose. “Congratulations. You are officially a human being. A human male, I might add.”
I watched with wonderment as his face turned a fantastic shade of pink, my grin stretching. “Are you blushing?”
He scowled, looking away. “No.”
“You are too cute for words.”
He groaned, burying his face in the pillow behind me. “Don’t say that. I hate it.”
I shook my head, lying down as well. “Sorry, but you really are sometimes.”
The archangel grunted in annoyance before scooting a bit closer so that our bodies were aligned, his right hand stroking the line of my side from my ribcage to my hipbone. He seemed oddly fixated on that part of my body rather than the more salacious bits, but I didn’t mind since it was soothing. We lay there in silence for a long while, enjoying the simple comfort of being able to touch one another, until eventually his fingertips wandered to my back and began tracing the scars.
“I could heal them, you know,” Michael murmured, his thumb caressing one scar that peeked around the small of my back and spilled onto the side of my thigh.
“I know. Raphael offered the same thing, but I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“They’re reminders of my past, of things I can’t forget. Things that made me the way I am. Making them disappear won’t change anything. I’ll carry them like I carry everything else.”
Michael pushed up on one hand above me and kissed my lips once, softly. “May I never become something you have to carry.”
I smiled, brushing the dark hair out of his eyes. “You won’t.”
EPILOGUE
“I made him just and right
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all th’ Ethreal Powers
And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail’d
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true alliance, Faith or Love
Where onely what they needs must do, appeard,
Not what they would?”
The pastor’s voice rose and fell with a distinctive cadence, accenting John Milton’s powerful words about mankind’s free will. Funny. Often, his poetry inspired me and filled me with a sense of purpose, but now it only served to squeeze a few more hot tears from the corners of my eyes.
I stood behind the seats of Terrell’s immediate family, not good enough for a chair in their eyes, but I didn’t expect them to treat me any differently now that he was gone. His mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that probably cost more than my dress, and his father had one arm around her shoulders, rubbing her arm. They met no one’s gaze, only staring forlornly at their son’s coffin, which overflowed with white roses and lilies.