Fall From Grace(105)

He stood over me.  Giant steel colored feathery wings silently emerged from behind his shoulders and reached to the ceiling and walls of the coffee shop.  The edges of each feather looked as sharp as razor blades. They glistened and reflected the cafes lights as if they were made of metal.  Maybe they were.

I folded my arms across my chest and stood my ground.  “Yeah, um.  So what, is that supposed to scare me?”

His features turned hard and his skin became marbleized with veins of gray spidered across it.  Each strand of his hair thickened and hardened into a razor sharp spike. His hands turned into talons, baring serrated claws that tore through the thick wood of the table as he scraped across it.

Slowly, he advanced toward me until he hovered so close I could feel the coldness of the metal and stone that he transformed into.  I still was not afraid.

When the ancient blue colored irises of his eyes turned into blazing fires of reds and yellows, I raised my hand and touched his cheek softly.  The flames turned to embers, and then back to oceans of blue.  When I placed my other hand along his torso, where a human heart should be, his skin softened and he became human like again.  I did have power over him.

“You can’t begin to imagine how long I’ve waited for you to touch me,” he whispered.

“To what avail, Gabriel?  I have been punished for centuries for just kissing an angel.  What would my punishment be if I gave myself to you now?  Shamsiel was thrown in hell, what would your penalty be?”

I moved even closer into him, touched my body to his.  God help me, I wanted to hurt him and make him suffer for everything he’d done.  “Tell me, Gabriel, as an archangel, I mean you are the messenger of God, what would happen if we were to...” I brushed my lips against his neck.  If I could take him to hell, I was going to.

He swallowed, his throat moving and constricting under my lips.

“He hasn’t spoken with me.  I’ve been on earth with you.  I would suffer the fires of hell for you, but with us together we could rule the heavens.”

I slid my lips along his jaw right to his lips and kissed him.  I could still hear Shane in the hospital room below us screaming for Gabriel to help him.  I slowly pulled away and looked right into Gabriel’s eyes.  His features were soft and wanting, his breaths came out heavy and lusty.

“Go to Shane, Gabriel, tell him everything.  Then come back to me.  Do that one thing for me, Gabriel, and I’m yours.”

He stood there looking at me.

I closed my eyes and hung my head in my hands.  Everything just seemed to swirl around in my mind, memories, and lifetimes. The only thing that never changed was the perfection of that one long ago kiss.

When I reopened my eyes, the table and chairs were back where they belonged and I was alone.  My coffee stood on the table waiting for me.

I sipped the warm caramel flavored coffee as I watched Shane crawl onto Grace’s bed and tenderly hold her in his arms.

For my sake, this better be a long coffee break, because I needed to get the hell out of here before that lunatic rogue angel came back for me.  I stormed out of the coffee shop and into a dusty desert road, taking my coffee with me.