Lost Feather (The Forgotten Angel, #1)

by Merri Bright

“I’ve seen smut on Protectors who were ten times your age, but never this excessive. How could you allow yourself to become so tainted? And why are you so short?”

My legs left the table one at a time, and when Growly’s fingers started exploring my feet, dipping in between each toe, scraping lightly at the thick gray smut, I realized there was Hell… and then there was Tickle Hell.

“What?” Still pacing, he casually waved a hand. “Speak.” “Number one,” I said furiously, my body still held to the table. “You are the world’s biggest basshole. I. Am. Ticklish.” He lifted a hand again like he was going to do the Silence Thing, so I rushed to get the rest of it out. “I would have just told you my name, if you’d bothered to ask.”

“Some called me Tili.” A burning tear rolled down my cheek and splashed on the table, but I shook away the strange pain and continued, “But my first name… was Inutilia.” Useless.

From across the Hall, Sunny gave a double thumbs-up. “You’ve got this,” she stage-whispered. “Rock on.” The others stared at her, murmuring. Definitely a ride or die birch.

“My darling one, I will lick you and touch you like this for eternity. I want nothing for myself. I love only to please you and bring you as many orgasms as your heart desires. All the orgasms. All for you.”

“Finally!” I yelled, waking myself from the dream as I tumbled off the side of the tall bed. Dangit, that dream had been a good one, even if Gavriel was the least likely dream lover ever.

Please let it be there. Please let there be… A thrill of illicit joy raced through me as I thought of the one craft supply I had discovered in the past seventy-five years on Earth, the one which I’d been forbidden to use at least once in every lifetime. After I learned how awful it was for the environment, I’d begrudgingly switched to other crafts. But this stuff was my secret addiction. It was the crack of crafting, the heroin of home décor, the meth of maker spaces everywhere. “Glitter,” Sunny and I both breathed at the same time.

“Let me see.” I held my hands out. She put an enormous glass jar full of every color glitter in my grasp, and I cradled and stroked it like the precious one ring that it was.

I swallowed hard, my senses flooded with risqué thoughts about rugged Mikhail, mysterious Gavriel, gorgeous Righteous and that smoking hot—wait, NOT the Great Gate. Stop thinking about it that way, Feather! Gates are not appropriate romantic partners!

“So, I am spiritually contagious. Good to know.” I had moral mono. Heavenly herpes. Soul syphilis.

I tiptoed closer and saw that he wasn’t wearing a robe or a toga, just… a pair of cut-off gray sweatpants? With what looked like

a significant portion of an anaconda curled up right beneath the drawstring. An anaconda that had recently eaten an ostrich egg. “Come in. Your alpha has prepared a nest for you. It’s time for your heat, my sweet omega.” Aw, yeah. This was that dream.

“You won’t tell me your name?” Silent amusement. “All right. I still get three guesses. Is it… Eduardo?” “You already guessed that one. In 1862. Still no.” “Zeus?” “Don’t insult me.” This time, I rolled my eyes for real. “Vladimirov?” “We’ve talked about this. I’m not a vampire.”

“You know Gavriel? How do you know him?” I felt rather than heard him moving away. “Rumple? Rumpelstiltskin Johnson the Third, you get back here!” He didn’t come back, though when a cold wind blew a bunch of glitter from the floor and into my hair right before Sunny knocked, I could have sworn there was laughter in the room.

She ignored my question. “Ugh. Righteous would have to pull the stick out of his ash before I’d let him take a ride through my tunnel of love.” “Your tunnel?” I stumbled on the bare floor, piecing together what that meant. “Your, um…” She picked up the knife, cutting away a sliver of smut from her hand with every word. “Yeah, my vajayjay. My bajingo. My front bottom. My penis fly trap. My lady garden. My beef curtains. My—” “Stop!” I pleaded. “Stop talking!”

“Are you telling me everyone is going commando here? Not just me and Righteous?” I goggled my eyes at her. “There’s no underwear in Sanctuary… at all? I mean, I figured they just weren’t wasting any on me, what with my smut and all.” “You peeked at Righteous?” She smirked when I stammered and covered my cheeks with my glittery hands. “Don’t act innocent. You’re the one who called it the Loch Ness monster.” She had me there. “I assume he had underwear at some point. It’s just that he’s such an uptight ashhole, his tighty whities probably got sucked up inside him.”

I peeked over at the stack of shirts; I hadn’t had the courage to give them to Mikhail yet. Some of them weren’t too risqué, like the one that spelled out Angel Daddy in hot pink sequins. But the newest one said Ask Me About Knife Play, and I wondered if I’d gone too far.

“Stop yourself from kissing me?” I batted my eyelashes, waiting for him to look at my face. I batted a little harder when he finally did. “I get that a lot. I’m a Protector magnet. It’s my eyes. Or maybe my smut. My smutshakes bring all the boys to the yard…”

“Did I punch you?” I took a moment to be glad my hands were now so clean that no smut had rubbed off onto his robe at all. I rubbed my knuckles over the ridges of muscles just beneath the cloth. “You did,” he answered, his lips twitching. “Sweet one, I did not touch those women. I would not. Not ever before, and especially now that…” He broke off, and a strange, panicked expression flitted over his face before he masked it. I unfolded my fist and stroked his abs in apology for punching him, and then again in appreciation, and one more time because the spot on my nape gave me the most delicious feeling when I did it.