Crave (Fallen Angels, #2)

by J.R. Ward

The bomb was one of their own and Matthias had known precisely where to put his foot in the sand. And that only happened if you wanted to blow your damned self up.

But at least his new CO hadn’t had a problem with it: Nigel, the tight-ass English archangel, had given permission for this morbid diversion, but there was no reason to take advantage of the leeway.

But stepping out of one life and into another was never simple and never cut-and-dried. Inevitably, there were tendrils of what had gone before that you had to snip and cast off, and that took time.

Isaac Rothe, age twenty-six, apartment down on Tremont Street. Unemployed. No priors. Arrested along with eight others as part of a bust the night before on an underground gambling and fighting ring.

His eyes were the color of frost on window glass, and filled with the shadows of deeds that stained the soul.

Jim Heron was exactly as Isaac remembered him: big, jacked, and nothing but business. The blue eyes were the same, the blond hair was still mostly buzzed off, the face was freshly shaven as always. He even had a Marlboro quietly smoldering in his hand.

God, she was desperate for him: She wanted to hurl herself right into him and get knocked out by the impact. She wanted him to be the brick wall that she slammed into. She wanted to be senseless and reeling and out of touch with her reality . . . because of him and the sex he threw off like a scent and the wild ride he would be.

He cut her off, his mouth finding hers and taking her lips like he owned her. He kissed her with none of the awkward first-time stuff she was used to; there was nothing hesitant or polite or tentative at all: Isaac kissed her like he meant to have her, and she was ready to be taken.

There were definitely times as you got older when you began to see your parent as a person rather than Father or Mother.

So this was how a birthday cake felt: kinda worried, given that all your delicate frosting was damn close to open flames.

“It’s a video game where you assassinate people. About seven or eight years ago, the first online gaming communities were getting big and integrated play had really caught on. sKillerz was created by some sick bastard—no one’s ever met the guy, apparently—but he’s a genius at graphics and realism. As for me? I had a head for computers and I liked”—to kill people—“I liked playing the game. Pretty soon there were hundreds of people in this virtual world—with all these weapons and identities in all these cities and countries. I was at the top of all of them. I had this, like . . . knack for knowing how to get to people and what to use and where to put the bodies. It was just a game, though. Something I did when I wasn’t working on the farm. Then, about . . . about two years into it . . . I started to feel as though I was being watched. That went on for, like, a week, until one night this guy named Jeremiah showed up at the farm. I was working the back rails, mending fences, and he drove up in an unmarked.”