Page 28 of Touched By Death

“Try what?” I ask.

“Shove me back.”

“This is crazy,” I breathe out softly, squeezing the blanket. “It proves nothing.”

“Wrong.” He reaches out to stroke my face, his fingers burning a path across my cheekbone. “It proves everything.”

He moves in, and that’s when it dawns on me that he’s about to kiss me. I don’t know what the hell to do.

When his warm breath hits my lips, panic flares up with such intensity that I shove him back with all my strength. In a blur of motion, he collides with the wall across the room and tumbles to the floor in a heap of masculine laughter. A framed picture crashes to the ground and knocks over a pile of stacked books.

Rising to his feet, careful not to step on the paperbacks, he brushes off his knees and quickly shakes out his impressive wings.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, worrying my bottom lip. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t sweat it. My bruised ego will heal.” The humor in his voice has me looking up at him. “But as I said”—he winks in my direction—“you feed on fear and destruction. Blood, while essential to a certain degree, is not the most vital sustenance for your survival.”

Sliding out from the bed and standing up on shaky legs, I attempt to steady myself with a hand on the bedside table. “How can blood be essential and yet, at the same time, not?”

Dmitriy crosses the room in a flash and slides his arm around my waist. I can’t think when his scent of cologne and a hint of the night waft from his button-up shirt.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I reassure him, trying to conceal the shake in my voice.

“You need to rest.”

I let him guide me back down, finally admitting that he’s right. I don’t feel too good.

“No fallen angel can survive without blood completely, but you could probably survive months without feeding from a human as long as you have access to fear. Why else do you think you torture your human victims, when other fallen angels seduce theirs?”

“Why is everything such a mess?” I ask around a yawn.

Dmitriy’s soft smile plays at the corners of his lips while he studies my face. “Get some rest. We’ll figure it out.”

I want to say more, but exhaustion sweeps in and drags me into a fretful sleep before I can utter another word.

Chapter Ten

AURELIA

“Aurelia?”

At the sound of Amenadiel’s voice, I swivel around and almost crash into the console table behind me.

“Where are you going?”

I look back at the front door, wracking my brain. “I can’t remember.”

He descends the last step and slowly walks up to me, observing me closely as if he’s searching for something. I don’t dare look away.

When he stops in front of me, I watch his hand like a hawk as it slides up the length of my arm, over my shoulder. It pauses, burning a path through my skin, before he drops it to his side. “Unable to sleep?”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“You shouldn’t be out there alone. The stalker…”

My throat jumps on a swallow. He’s nervous, and that makes me strangely jittery. “Is everything okay, Amenadiel?”

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