Becca Fitzpatrick: Hush Hush

I ignored the roll in my stomach and said, "Tell me."

"The first time I saw her, I was still an angel. It was an instant, possessive lust. It drove me crazy. I didn't know anything about her, except that I would do whatever it took to get close to her. I watched her for a while, and then I got it in my head that if I went down to Earth and possessed a human body, I would be cast out of heaven and become human. The thing is, I didn't know about Cheshvan. I came down on a night in August, but I couldn't possess the body. On my way back to heaven, a host of avenging angels stopped me and ripped out my wings. They tossed me out of the sky. Right away I knew something was wrong. When I looked at humans, all I could feel was an insatiable craving to be inside their bodies. All my powers were stripped, and I was this weak, pathetic thing. I wasn't human. I was fallen. I'd realized I'd given it all up, just like that. All this time I've hated myself for it. I thought I'd given it up for nothing." His eyes focused singularly on me, leaving me feeling transparent. "But if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have met you."

My conflicting emotions weighed so heavily inside my chest, I thought they might suffocate me. Biting back tears, I forged ahead. "Dabria said my birthmark means I'm related to Chauncey. Is that true?"

"Do you want me to answer that?"

I didn't know what I wanted. My whole world felt like a joke, and I was the last one to get the punch line. I wasn't Nora Grey, average girl. I was the descendant of someone who wasn't even human. And my heart was smashing itself to pieces over another nonhuman. A dark angel. "Which side of my family?" I said at last.

"Your dad's."

"Where's Chauncey now?" Even though we were related, I liked the idea of him being far away. Very far away. Far enough that the link between us might not feel as real.

His boots were flush with the toes of my tennis shoes. "I'm not going to kill you, Nora. I don't kill people who are important to me. And you top the list."

My heart did a nervous flip. My hands were pressed against his stomach, which was so hard even his skin didn't give. I was keeping a pointless safeguard between us, since not even a towering electrical fence would make me feel secure from him.

"You're impinging on my private space," I said, inching backward.

Patch gave a barely-there smile. "Impinging? This isn't the SAT, Nora."

I tucked a few stray hairs behind my ears and took one sizable step sideways, skirting the sink. "You're crowding me. I need- room." What I needed were boundaries. I needed willpower. I needed to be caged up, since yet again I was proving I couldn't be trusted in Patch's presence. I should have been bolting for the door, and yet… I wasn't. I tried convincing myself I was staying because I needed answers, but that was only part of it. It was the other part I didn't want to think about. The emotional part. The part that was pointless fighting.

"Are you keeping anything else from me?" I wanted to know.

"I'm keeping a lot of things from you."

My insides took a steep dive. "Like?"

"Like the way I feel about being locked up in here with you." Patch braced one hand against the mirror behind me, his weight tipping toward me. "You have no idea what you do to me."

I shook my head. "I don't think so. This isn't a good idea. This isn't right."

"There's all kinds of right," he murmured. "On the spectrum, we're still in the safe zone."

I was pretty sure the self-preserving half of my brain was screaming, Run for your life! Unfortunately, blood roared in my ears, and I wasn't hearing straight. Obviously I wasn't thinking straight either.

"Definitely right. Usually right," Patch continued. "Mostly right. Maybe right."

"Maybe not right now." I sucked in some air. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a fire alarm drilled into the wall. It was ten, maybe fifteen feet away. If I was fast, I could cross the room and pull it before Patch stopped me. Security would come running. I'd be safe. And that's what I wanted… wasn't it?

"Not a good idea," Patch said with a soft shake of his head.

I bolted for the fire alarm anyway. My fingers closed on the lever and I pulled down to sound the alarm. Only, the lever didn't budge. As hard as I tried, I couldn't get it to move. And then I recognized Patch's familiar presence in my head, and I knew it was a mind game.

I swiveled around to face him. "Get out of my head." I stormed back and shoved hard against his chest. Patch took a step back, steadying himself.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"For this whole night." For making me crazy about him when I knew it was wrong. He was the worst kind of wrong. He was so wrong it felt right, and that made me feel completely out of control.

I might have been tempted to hit him square in the jaw had he not taken me by the shoulders and pinned me against the wall. There was hardly any space left between us, just a thin boundary of air, but Patch managed to eliminate it.

"Let's be honest, Nora. You've got it bad for me." His eyes held a lot of depth. "And I've got it bad for you." He leaned into me and put his mouth on mine. A lot of him was on me, actually. We touched base at several strategic locations down our bodies, and it took all my willpower to break away.

I pulled back. "I'm not finished. What happened to Dabria?"

"All taken care of."

"What exactly does that mean?"

"She wasn't going to keep her wings after plotting to kill you. The moment she tried to get back into heaven, the avenging angels would have stripped them. She had it coming sooner or later. I just sped things up."

"So you just-tore them off?"

"They were deteriorating; the feathers were broken and thin. If she stayed on Earth much longer, it was a signal to every other fallen angel who saw her that she'd fallen. If I didn't do it, one of them would have."

'Is she going to make-I dodged another one of his advances-another unwanted appearance in my life?"

"Hard to say."

Lightning quick, Patch caught hold of the hem of my sweater. He reeled me into him. His knuckles brushed the skin of my navel. Heat and ice shot through me simultaneously. "You could take her, Angel," he said. "I've seen both of you in action, and my bet's on you. You don't need me for that."

"What do I need you for?"

He laughed. Not abruptly, but with a certain low desire. His eyes had lost their edge and were focused wholly on me. His smile was all fox… but softer. Something just behind my navel danced, then coiled lower.

"Door's locked," he said. "And we have unfinished business."

My body seemed to have swept aside the logical part of my brain. Smothered it, in fact. I slid my hands up his chest and looped my arms around his neck. Patch lifted me at the hips, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. My pulse pounded, but I didn't mind one little bit. I crushed my mouth to his, soaking up the ecstasy of his mouth on mine, his hands on me, feeling on the verge of bursting out of my skin-

The cell phone in my pocket rang to life. I pulled away from Patch, breathing heavily, and the phone rang a second time.

"Voice mail," Patch said.

Deep in the recesses of my consciousness, I knew answering my phone was important. I couldn't remember why; kissing Patch had made every last harbored worry evaporate. I untangled myself from him, turning away so he wouldn't see how worked up ten seconds of kissing him had made me. Internally I was screaming with joy.

"Hello?" I answered, resisting the urge to wipe my mouth for smeared lip gloss.

"Babe!" Vee said. We had a bad connection, the crackle of static cutting across her voice. "Where are you?"

"Where are you? Are you still with Elliot and Jules?" I flattened a hand against my free ear to hear better.