Loving Your Lies (35 page)

It made me laugh. But I could definitely
live with that.

I sat up, crossed my legs, and braced myself
on my hands behind my back, gazing at the sky. The drifting clouds
were beginning to clear, leaving nothing but blue above. Hard to
imagine how an institution like Heaven fit there.

My eyes leveled with his. “What does it look
like? Heaven. Is it a city in the clouds? A palace where more
angels like you hang out?”

Julian rolled onto his back and propped on
his elbows. “The human mind can’t grasp the true image of Heaven.
No offence, but you simply lack the imagination and language to
describe it.”

His words didn’t offend me, yet I yearned
for a visual. Disappointed, I lowered my gaze.

He sat up and cupped my chin with his gentle
fingers. “Heaven is not one particular place, or town, or house. It
would be best described as—” His lips pursed. “It’s a feeling. Deep
inside you, as well as all around you. Something absolutely
peaceful. And harmonious. Like the love of an innocent child.”

“Those are mighty words,” I whispered,
awed.

“You asked for them.”

And yet they were hard to comprehend. A
place inside me where only love existed, without doubts or anger?
Heaven definitely didn’t reside within me. And what about fear?
Could an angel be afraid of something?

“You look like you have a lot of questions,”
Julian said.

“Only a million. Or two.”

Laughing, he tucked a wisp of hair behind my
ear. “Why don’t we try to get some of them answered?”

“Is that possible?” It seemed completely
unacceptable for an angel to spill secrets to a
meagerly
developed human
. But Julian’s nod assured me.

If only I knew where to start. I tried to
think of the most important one. But everything that came to me
seemed equally interesting.

“How many angels are there? Do they all look
like you? Do you know God—personally?” The smile on his face grew
wider with each question I shot at him. “How old are you? Is Julian
your real name?”

“Easy there.” He raised his palms and cut me
short. “We do have more than two minutes to talk about it all.”

I sucked in a breath, calming my spinning
mind, waiting for him to get started.

“Okay, so how many of us are there?” he
repeated my first question deliberately slow. “There’d be twelve
for each human soul. Then there are the Supporters, who aren’t
assigned to a particular soul yet. They are about as many as the
assigned ones. The Healers, the Guardians—”

My jaw dropped as he counted them on his
fingers.

“The Escorts, the Muses, the Keepers, and
the Counsels. I’m sure I left someone out, but in total there would
be…let’s just say countless. And I’m grateful they all do
not
look like me.”

My mouth hung open. Ignoring it, he went on.
“I do know God. We all do. And Julian is my name. Well, at least it
is when I travel down to Earth. My angel name is a bit of a tongue
twister in human language.”

I frowned. “How so?”

Julian rubbed his neck. Then his lips curled
and his eyes lit up. “Come closer.” But he didn’t give me time to
scoot forward as he already leaned toward me, placing both hands to
my temples.

A confused laugh escaped me. “What are you
going to—” I fell silent. A choir sang out in my mind. Only they
didn’t sing particular words, but rather hummed various chords as
beautiful as the sound of winter bells.

“Now, that’s a mouthful,” I murmured.

“You see why it’s hard to say my name out
loud. And to answer your last question, I would like you to take a
guess on my age first.” He grinned.

“But the other day you said you were twenty
one.”

“No. You said it. I didn’t say either yes or
no. Remember?”

I actually did. When he’d called it a good
guess, I’d automatically assumed he confirmed. Tricky devil. Or
angel…

“Okay, do you go by human years?”

“Actually, we don’t, but I can convert it
for you. So, what’s your guess?”

I scratched my head, uncertain of what to
really say. “You look to me like twenty-ish.”

He dragged his mouth awkwardly to one side
and made a snorting sound. “You’re not even close, honey.”

“All right then thirty?” But even I knew
that would be stretching it.

Julian cut a bored glance skyward. “In fact,
I’m sixty-five.”

“Bloody hell, what’s your secret? Sixty-five
years and not a single gray hair on you.” I clapped my hands
together, feigning dramatic surprise, when I actually almost tipped
backwards with honest amazement.

With a rascally spark in his eyes, he leaned
forward to whisper into my ear. “It’s sixty-five
millennia
.”

That left me breathless. “You’re shitting
me.”

“No shit.” Julian raised his right hand as
if to swear and kept his face straight. But already in the next
second, he ruffled my hair. “Don’t make a face. Compared to as long
as I will exist, the last sixty millennia were only a blink of an
eye. And you mustn’t forget, I only spent a minimum of that time on
Earth in human form.”

Okay, cut the last.
Trying to
comprehend would only make my head spin. But honestly, sixty-five
thousand years? He must have met quite a few people in that
time.

Quite a few women. I could do nothing about
the stab of jealousy coming with that thought.

“In all that time, how many girlfriends did
you have?”

He studied me. After half a minute, I
started to feel really uncomfortable. But finally he said, “As an
angel, you feel love for everyone and everything. Different to the
way
you
feel it. We enjoy the company of others. We watch
people get born, grow up, live their lives. And during all this
time, we love each of them. Yet, no angel ever feels the need to be
with someone. With anyone.
I
never felt it. Until I met
you.”

He let go of a sigh, brushing his thumb over
my cheekbone. “It seems like with your every move and with every
word you say you pull me in, and I can’t turn away. Every bit of
your mind intrigues me like nothing ever did. You come close to me,
and I can’t resist touching you. Your hair. Your skin.” He laughed
softly. “Your rebellious heart.”

“Why is that?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. It just
is
.”

This was so hard to believe. After all, I
was nothing but a bedraggled teenager, who’d spent more time hiding
from the police in public toilets than in school.

We both fell silent for what seemed like
minutes. I wished I’d found the right words to tell him in as
beautiful a way what he was to me. My life might have not lasted as
long as Julian’s, but it seemed I’d always saved this exclusive
little spot in my heart for him. However, my mouth stood sealed,
and I could only hope he understood what I failed to speak out
loud.

I let another couple of minutes pass, in
which he tenderly stroked my arm, or skimmed his fingers through my
hair. When the opportunity of me opening up to him had completely
disappeared, I came up with something else that had been burning on
my mind for the last few days. “Can you fly? And if you’re a real
angel, why don’t you have wings?”

“I
am
a real angel. And I certainly
can fly.”

“So you do have wings? But where do you keep
them? You sure can’t take them off and hide them in your pockets,
right?”

The rolling of his eyes and the soft tsk
made him appear sweet. “Just where do you get your imagination
from? I can’t take them off. But I can let them vanish.”

“How?”

Julian rubbed his chin, pursing his lips.
“How can I explain? It’s like, I can manipulate their molecules.
Slow them down or speed them up. They’re always there, but you
wouldn’t see them.”

I had always been a slouch in physics, so
his elaboration made little sense to me. “It sounds like you’re
able to control matter and time. Somehow. Right? Can you also
travel through time?”

One corner of his mouth tugged up. “Let’s
put it this way: I can bend time to my advantage. No one can jump
back to an earlier moment, but through immense control, I can
reduce the speed by which the molecules move. Thus I can sort
of…hover.”

“Hover?”

“Between moments.” He held out his right
hand with his index stretched. From a bush nearby, a sparrow took
off, gliding toward us. About a foot away from Julian’s hand, the
bird’s flight suddenly slowed. Each flap of its wings was carried
out with incredible grace. What would normally happen in the
fraction of a millisecond, now took longer than half a minute.

Its thin claws stretched wide before they
curled around Julian’s finger, slowly, like a flower withdrawing
its blossom after dark.

Settled on my haunches, I inspected the bird
from all sides. “Epic.”

The sparrow blinked once in some fifteen
seconds. Then it spread its wings again and left Julian’s finger,
no faster than it had landed.

My curiosity got the best of me. “How slow
can you go?”

Julian grinned and flicked his eyes at the
bird that now hovered in midair, not moving at all. It was like the
world had stopped around us, and Julian and I were the only beings
in motion.

“And you can hold this for how long?”

He shrugged. “Like, forever.”

“One moment stretched to eternity? That must
be an awfully long time.” My glance switched between the bird
frozen in mid-air and Julian’s face. Then a realization struck me.
“You do this a lot when we kiss.”

Julian graced his knuckles along my jaw. “I
like to savor the moment.”

The bird broke free from its rigor and
fluttered excitedly away. Watching the sparrow land in another
tree, I leaned into Julian’s palm. “So, can I get stuck between the
moments, like you?”

He nodded. “If you’re with me.”

“Then you can show me your wings, too.
Right?”

Without a word, Julian began unbuttoning his
shirt. He shrugged it off and dropped it to the grass. The sight of
his firm, smooth chest made my mouth water. His abs twitched, his
pecs bulged as he flexed his neck, closing his eyes for a second. A
vertical beam of white light appeared behind him and reached about
two feet above his head.

After what he’d shown me with the bird a
minute ago, this shouldn’t have surprised me at all. And yet, I
held my breath, palming my cheeks.

The column of light parted when Julian
opened his eyes again. A set of marble white wings unfolded as wide
as his height, layered with a thousand downy feathers.

Sunlight reflected off the wings, dipping
his shape in a mist of halo, which made it hard to look away. But
at the same time, the light blinded me. I swallowed hard against my
bafflement. “Can I touch them?”

For the first time since we came out here,
Julian seemed the tiniest bit uncertain. “No one has ever touched
them before.”

“I promise to be extra gentle,” I teased,
already crawling toward him. Kneeling, I reached out. Julian’s
sudden tension didn’t escape me, but it also couldn’t make me stop.
As soon as I traced the curve of his left wing, the limb twitched
away. A visible shiver raked over his naked torso.

“Sensitive, are we?”

“You have no idea,” he drawled on a deep
rumble.

I gasped when he grabbed me around the waist
and pulled me into his lap. Dipping his head, he purred into my
ear. “But I can show you a spot or two on your body, which are just
as sensitive.” He took my earlobe into his mouth, nibbling
gently.

The whisk of his tongue coaxed a
surprisingly loud moan from me. He continued to nibble a path along
my jaw, and I surrendered to his embrace.

His wings flapped to the front. They closed
around me, enveloping me in total protection. His tongue trailed
down my chin and neck in the most enticing way, aiming at the
hollow in the base of my throat. I angled my head to give him
access to that sensitive part of my skin. Above, a swarm of
swallows hovered motionless in the sky.

“You froze time again?” I breathed, running
my fingers through his silky golden hair.

Julian skimmed the tip of his nose across my
cheek. When his eyes were level with mine, he gave me a determined
stare. “I told you, I like to savor.”

He cupped my face, brushed my lips with his
thumb, and took my mouth with a ferociously slow kiss. Pleasant
tickles raked down my front to center in my belly. I shivered in
his arms. But he only held me tighter, supporting part of my
weight.

His hands trailed down my sides then moved
up again. With them came my shirt. I lifted my arms to let him
strip it off and toss it aside.

“You’re so beautiful, I could eat you
up.”

“So says the shiny angel,” I replied.

Feeling his soft hair and warm skin, I
skimmed my fingers down his neck and over his shoulder blades. My
hands found the roots of his wings. I traced the edge winding
around me. Warm and soft, his wings trembled under my touch. But he
didn’t pull away this time. Instead, he dipped his head to the
crook of my neck. His breath as he moaned was hot and moist on my
skin.

His feathers brushed down my spine. The
sensation more than I could bear, an aching need grew fast inside
me.

Without thinking, I shifted in his lap,
straddled him, and cupped his face. He welcomed my burning kisses
and pulled me down with him. At his sides, his wings spread and
lowered, flattening the high grass.

A wonderful shiver stole through me as his
hands stroked down my back, skimming over the curves of my bottom
and trailing further along my kneeling legs. But the intensity of
his kissing abated, filling me with unease.

The fire had vanished from his eyes, his
hands came to rest on my thighs. He’d left me to dwindle in my own
passion.

“Don’t you want me?”