~2~

"Who cares about the rules? It's the end of the world, remember?"

She looks at him with defiance in her eyes, daring him to disagree with her, and Raffe is oddly pleased by the rebellious spark inside of her. She's stubborn. Like him.

"Rules are important to us. Angels are a warrior race."

"I noticed. But what does that have to do with it?"

He explains to her, but the words are hollow, unconvincing. He wonders if he's started doubting them himself.

The damn girl leans closer, clouding his mind with her proximity, and he can't help but think that it would only take an inch to close the gap between them. To taste her.

"We're really scary, aren't we?" She's referring to herself and the other Daughters of Men, and Raffe couldn't agree more.

His eyes dart down to her lips for a short moment before he can stop himself, remembering her taste and the push of her velvet tongue against his, before he manages to refocus his thoughts on the now.

"Daughters of Men are truly dangerous. Not to mention truly annoying. In a yappy, occasionally cute kind of way."

She leans back, a little frown appearing on her forehead, being the very example of cute annoying.
After he explains a few rules of his world, she sighs and rubs her forehead, as if her head is hurting from the load of information. "Your world is so different from mine. Do you guys have anything in common with humans?"

He looks down at her and thinks about his longing for her, the almost primeval desire that she arouses in him, and how much she weakens and distracts him.

Yes. "Nothing we'll admit to."

"There's no way around it, is there?" Her voice sounds sad, resigned. "We're mortal enemies and I should be trying to kill you and everyone like you."

The urge to touch her, to be close to her, grips him so sudden and painful that he doesn't have the will to resist. He leans forward and touches his forehead to hers, closing his eyes against the feeling of loss that overcomes him. This is all there is. All that ever can be.

"Yes."

He never knew human food could taste so good. After living on animal food and half-rotten leftovers for weeks, the peanut butter and raisin bran taste like ambrosia.

She is clearly enjoying the treat too, crunching on handfuls of cereal like an adorable, little hamster, her eyes closing blissfully at the taste. He isn't sure why she enjoys the cereals so much, as the peanut butter tastes much better on its own in his eyes, but he's not complaining. It's not a proper meal, but he's happy that he can provide her with tasteful food for a change.

Okay, if she leaves her cereal all in the peanut butter, he is complaining. He puts the jar away and she immediately claims it for herself, dipping her fingers in eagerly.

"Can we please just get back to how your people are partying over killing my people?"

She licks a bit of peanut butter off her fingers.

"They're celebrating the possibility of freeing their friends."

She puckers her lips around her index finger and sucks, her cheeks hollowing out in the process.
A pang of lust zips through his body. He swallows and shifts in his seat, trying to avoid the arousal from messing with his mind.
He glares at her, irrationally upset with her for being so goddamn tempting. So unbelievable seductive.

He dips cereal into the peanut butter, forcing her to go back to the much less dangerous chewing before she can lick up the peanut butter again. It helps to not having to see her do that anymore, but his lust has already been roused and it's difficult to keep the fantasies at bay.

"The system is purposefully harsh to keep everyone in line. It's what keeps our warrior society together."

And it's why he can't fall apart. Why he must get a grip on himself. She is fire and he has no intent to burn.

"And if their judged guilty?"

Her voice is innocent, curious, like she isn't aware at all of the trouble she's causing him. Raffe is incredulous of how unaware she is of her own attractiveness.

She looks at a dab of peanut butter on the tip of her finger and he's bracing himself for the worst, but it doesn't do him any good. Her pink tongue darts out, licking at the top of her finger, her eyes closing in bliss as she savors the taste.

He gets up so abruptly, he almost tips over the chair. It's all he can do to restrain from grabbing her and ravishing her. His heart is hammering in his chest.

"Then eternity gets longer. " His voice sounds thick to his own ears. Aroused.

He starts pacing, putting as much distance between him and the girl as possible, desperate to keep his thoughts from wandering off, but it's already too late. He can't push down the arousal, can't push down the fantasies. He thinks about her finger in her mouth. Thinks about his finger in her mouth. Thinks about her lips around his cock.

Shit.

He's so incredibly turned on. So pent up. He could cut glass with his hard-on.

He forces his breath out in a controlled exhale, intending to calm his racing heart, but it does nothing to ease his troubled mind. "Let's go find my sword."

While she searches the house for warmer clothes, he quickly adjusts himself, scolding himself silently for the slip-up. He won't allow this again. He is an archangel and known for his extraordinary self-control. Especially when it comes to women.
He has always been better at keeping himself in check than most of his warriors and one skinny, little girl wouldn't change all that. No one had ever been able to break his willpower, and she wouldn't be the first to accomplish that.

The Locusts whirl around them, creating wind that blows the girl's hair all around her head, but she's unaware of it, fast asleep.

She fell asleep about an hour ago, after the exhaustion and post-fight adrenaline drop caught up with her. She fought it, Raffe noticed, unwilling to surrender to such a vulnerable state while surrounded by scorpion-like monsters, but after a couple of hours of flying, her eyes just fell close and her breathing evened.

She is nestled against his chest, slightly turned toward him with her face half buried in his shirt and one of her hands fisting the fabric, and the sight makes his chest ache.

He always considered human, the Daughters of Men especially, to be strange-looking at best, if not rough and coarse compared to the grace of angels, but she looks as dainty and delicate as a doll.

That is, if you ignore the blood splattered across the front of her shirt.

The blood.

She killed an angel. One of Uriel's gofers, so good riddance, but the sight of it still shocked him. He's pretty sure that she's the first human to ever have killed an angel in combat. His arms involuntarily tighten around her.

The scorpions dip down suddenly, following Paige's lead, and Raffe follows them to the ground. They have landed at the outer edge of the forest, near a small cottage, mostly-intact looking.

She stirs in his arms as his feet touch the ground and he thinks she'll wake, but then she just nuzzles into his chest more. He wishes he could let her sleep, give her a rest after all the things she endured, but he needs to check the cabin properly and he can't do that with her in his arms. More importantly, he can't fight with her in his arms, should the situation call for it.

"Hey," he whispers, and the soft, almost crooning quality of his voice surprises him. "Time to wake up."

She stirs again, her eyelids fluttering, taking only a moment to orient herself, before she jolts awake, instantly alert. He supposes it's a habit she picked up after things got drastic on earth. No time to gently shake sleep off, when you're living in constant danger.

She seems to notice that she's still in his arms, because she suddenly looks awkward. He gently lets her down.

"How long was I out?"

"Just about an hour. Let's check that cabin over there and if it's serviceable, we should rest for the night."

She nods and looks over to her sister, who is climbing down from the Locusts she's been sitting on.

"What about him?" She asks, her voice thickening with disgust.

He considers their possibilities for a moment. "Fake Locusts or not, he shouldn't wake up anytime soon. And if he does, I'll doubt he ever fully recovers. Should be save to bring him in and secure him. If he wakes up, I can squeeze him for information. "

She nods again, but he can tell from the look in her eyes that she doesn't like the thought of sleeping under a roof with him.

"Paige, sweetie? Are you coming?"

The girl looks up at the sound of her name, then slowly shakes her head. Her older sister seems stricken. "What? But why not?"

Paige's eyes dart to the forest. In a small voice, she whispers. "Hungry."

"Oh. Oh! You want to go hunting?"

Paige hesitates, then nods.

"Have you ever hunted before?"

Again a nod, like a motion of defeat.

"Okay, well, then you should probably do that. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. But stay close to the cabin, and if anything happens, call out for us immediately, okay?"

Raffe is impressed by how well she handles herself given the circumstances. She's steeling herself, adjusting to the situation. She's cut like a survivor.

They watch Paige disappear into the forest, the swarm of scorpions following after her like giant flies, leaving a shriveled and nearly unrecognizable Beliel on the ground.

Raffe drags him into the cabin, which turns out to be save and still in a pretty good shape, where they use hiking robes and a metal chain to tie him to the stairs in the basement.
It's a miracle this thing even has a basement, as the cabin is pretty small and plain. Besides the kitchen and the bathroom, there is only a living room with an extensible studio couch.

There is still plenty of tinned food in the kitchen, probably because the cabin is so desolated that no one stumbled across it to raid it, but neither of them feels like eating, too exhausted from the fight at the aery, followed by an hours long flight.

Raffe showers first, watching the blood on him disappear down the drain. The water is cold, but his body has an excellent regulation system, so he isn't bothered by it.

He wraps a towel around his hips, not having brought any clean clothes with him to the bathroom, and heads out into the living room.

She is already waiting on the other side, a pile of clean clothes from the drawer in the back of the room clutched to her chest. She stares at him, quickly taking in his near-nakedness, and her face heats up.

"Oh, um… is the bathroom free?"

He decides not to tease her about it. It's been a long day and he thinks bantering her about his almost nudity while she's clearly uncomfortable about it is pretty obnoxious anyway.

He rummages through the drawer, while she showers, searching for fitting clothes. Luckily, whoever owns this place must've been a pretty tall dude, because the clothes are roughly his size.

He's set up the studio couch – they'll have to share it for the night – when she comes out of the bathroom, wearing a shirt three times too big for her, over equally miss-sized sweatpants.

Her dark hair is wet and curls around her face, dripping onto her shirt. Her face looks soft and clean and she looks small and young, or to be precise, even younger, in the huge clothes.

She switches off the light before climbing onto the couch herself. It's just big enough for both of them, but they are close, almost touching. There's something strangely intimate about her laying down beside him and his heartbeat quickens. There's a wool blanket hanging over the arm rest on her side of the couch. She takes it off and offers it awkwardly to him.

Raffe waves her off. "It's alright, I don't get cold. You need it more."

"Are you sure?"

A part of him wants to take the offer, yearns to slide in under the blanket with her, if only to feel the warmth radiating off her body better, but that is a dark part of him, the worst part, so he pushes it down.

"Absolutely. Now sleep. It's been a long day."

She huffs and throws the blanket over herself, wrapping herself completely in it.

They lie next to each other on their backs in silence. Raffe throws her a look and chuckles.

"You look like a burrito, all wrapped up in that blanket."

She looks surprised at his light tone and turns to him, eyes warming.

"An angel that knows about burritos. Interesting."

He grins at her and she responds with a cheeky smile of her own, a small dimple appearing on her left cheek. Their smiles fade as the air grows heavy with all the things unsaid between them. Their eyes meet and a moment of understanding passes between them, a link-up of thoughts without words.

"Are you sure you don't want a bit of the blanket, too?" Her voice is low, almost a whisper, her eyes casting away.

Raffe doesn't respond. For a moment, he almost thinks he can refuse, certain that he can resist the prospect of having a warm body to hold during the night, but the second her eyes dart back to his, his resolve fades away.

Without a word, he grabs the edge of the blanket she offers and tugs her close, covering them both with it.

In the middle of the night, he wakes up, not startled or disturbed by anything, but simply wakes, disoriented at first as he emerges from a dreamless sleep.

Soft hair tickles his face and a distant scent of shampoo and something else, something that evokes a familiar flutter in his stomach, surrounds him. He becomes aware of the girl he is holding in his arms.

He is surprised at how tightly he clutches her to him, as he has no memory of taking her into his arms before he fell asleep. It's disturbing – no alarming – how much his subconsciousness seems to yearn for her closeness.

Her head is against his shoulder, nose brushing his pulse point, and it's so innocent and in a way so very her, that his throat constricts. Gently, he untangles her arms from his torso and sits up, scooting to the edge of the couch.

Raffe runs a hand over his face and through his hair. He tries not to look down at her, but his eyes are drawn to her, roaming the lines of her face, the slope of her eyebrows, her soft lips slightly parted, forming a sweet, little 'O'.

She's rolled over a bit, half on her stomach, one arm curling under her head and the other resting next to her, hand loosely grabbing the sheets.
His eyes follow the curve of her body under the thin blanket, encouraged by the darkness of the night and the seclusion of their location. Never could he look at her like that, really look at her, at day, when she is awake and there are other eyes watching them. But they are completely alone in this remote cabin, no hellhounds or angels within miles, and for all his resisting and holding back, he allows himself this minor slip. He isn't doing anything but looking, after all.

The blanket is thin enough to show the lines of her body, the hollow of her lower back, the curve of her butt. Her dark hair is fanned out on the pillow, some of it falling over her face, and before he knows it, he is reaching out and brushes it back, gently tucking the soft strands behind her ear.

His eyes travel over her lips, chin and throat, and then his fingers do, too, just barely grazing her skin, feeling her softness under calloused fingertips. A sigh escapes the sleeping girl, the human girl, as he strokes her face with more tenderness than he thought himself capable of . His hand reaches her shoulderblades and a few fingers become the full palm, brushing slowly down the delicious arch of her back before coming to rest on her low back.

For a moment, he struggles with his need, so overcome by it that his self-control almost crumbles. He snatches his hand away and presses his eyes shut.
His breathing is coming out faster than normal, his pulse roaring in his ears. Looking at her sprawled across bedsheets, lying in bed with her, is too close to that part of his mind for him to deal with.

Still, he takes the time to adjust the blanket around her, tucking her in carefully, before he gets up.

Now that his heartbeat has calmed and the buzzing in his ears has ebbed away, he hears the humming sound coming from outside the cabin.

He steps to a window and draws back the curtains to survey the scene before him.

Paige is sitting outside, with her back turned towards him, looking up at the moon. If his eyesight wasn't as supreme as it is, he would've missed the blood coating her hands and forearms.
He leans his forehead against the pane, letting the glass cool his skin.

Outside, the Locust swarm whirls around Paige.

I think things are going to heat up around next chapter...
Please let me know what you think!

Hope you enjoyed!

~ K.