Spanked by an Angel [Notorious Nephilim 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (11 page)

Emmett pulled out a chair and straddled it backward. “Ladies, coming to the party tonight?”

“We wouldn’t miss it.” Redhead licked her lips.

Emmett glanced at Zach, searching for a sign he wanted him to leave. Zach looked slightly irritated, but not in a “get out of here right now” way. His half-eaten salad still had the fork in it, as though he’d been interrupted mid-meal.

Emmett flashed a grin. “Would you ladies mind if I talked to Zach alone for a moment? Business.”

Disappointment flooded their features as they rose. “Will we see you tonight?” asked the brunette.

“You bet.” Emmett watched her ass sway as she walked away. Cute, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Abigail’s.

“Thank you,” said Zach, stuffing a forkful of salad into his mouth.

“Yeah, you had that trapped look. Listen.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Abigail wandered into the library last night, and she saw a photo of us with the others.”

Zach paused with his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyes wide. “How the fuck did that happen?”

Emmett recounted how Rose had left the library door unlocked when she went outside, and explained to Zach what he’d seen on the security tapes. He then relayed the conversation Tiffany had with Abigail this morning.

“What should we do?” asked Zach.

“I think we should tell her, but I want to do it before the party. She’ll have questions.”

“Questions? Emmett, she’ll flip out.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think she will. If she were going to do that, she’d have confronted us this morning, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Zach pushed his salad away. “Shit. I was hoping we’d have more time with her before we had to tell her the truth. Actually, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to at all.”

“We’ve had to do it before.”

“And one day it’ll come back to bite us in the ass.”

Emmett grinned. “You worry too much. Ninety years and not once has it come back to haunt us. There’s no reason to think it will now.” He pointed at the salad. “If you’re done, let’s go find her right now.”

Zach stood. “That’s the spirit. Waste no time, take no prisoners.”

Emmett clapped him on the back. “Relax.”

* * * *

After ordering lunch in her room, Abigail searched the Lake County Clerk of Courts site for current or past civil cases, using Zach and Emmett’s names as key words. If she couldn’t find any public records on them, perhaps someone had filed a complaint against them? Tiffany said they’d been in business for ninety years. That’s a long time to go without at least one nuisance lawsuit.

She was less than an hour into her search when someone knocked on her door. Thinking it was Tiffany, who’d promised to find her hair accessories before the party, she opened it without glancing through the peephole.

“Oh…hi there.” Abigail’s heart hammered so loudly she was certain they heard it.

“Are we disturbing you?” asked Zach as he cut his gaze to her laptop. She should have closed it before she answered the door.

“No, not at all.” She crossed to the desk and lowered the top. “Come on in.”

Emmett pointed to her sandwich. “You could have come downstairs to eat. We missed you at breakfast.”

“I had some work to catch up on.”

He grinned, and her traitorous pussy grew moist. “Abigail, we talked about this. You’re on vacation.”

She took a seat on the sofa, hoping they’d turn their attention away from her computer. “Is that what you came up here to tell me?”

Zach sat next to her, and Emmett pulled a chair over so close he touched her knees. Her crazy dream came back in vivid detail. Only this time, the books chasing her had Zach and Emmett’s faces.

“No, we came to talk to you about something important.”

Shit. They knew she’d seen the scrapbook. “Look, I’m sorry. The door was open, and I didn’t see any signs saying not to go in. I just assumed…” She stopped and looked from one man to the other, trying to gauge their reactions.

“We’re not upset,” said Zach. “We came up here to try and explain.”

Abigail nodded. She didn’t trust her voice right now. The air had taken on that strange electrical charge again. She swore she could feel the blood coursing through her veins. Her limbs felt weighted down as a sudden panic seized her. Why did she need to know what the picture meant? It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to know.

“Are you familiar with the term Nephilim?” asked Zach.

“What? You mean the ones mentioned in the Bible?”

“Try to forget what you read in there, or what you’ve seen on Google, and think of them more as fallen angels.”

“Fallen? Why fallen?”

“As in they failed to accomplish what they were sent to Earth to do,” said Emmett.

Abigail looked from one to the other, searching for any sign they were bullshitting her. “You guys are serious.”

“Quite,” said Zach. “The picture of the twelve of us you saw was taken in 1946. We’d already been in business for twenty-five years. I’m guessing you’ve done the math and figured out approximately how old that would make us if we were human.”

She nodded, wondering if she dared to ask why angels were allowed to have sex. On the heels of that thought came one that suggested she must be nuts to believe their story. Although, if they truly were supernatural beings, it would certainly explain their incredible stamina during sex.

“The twelve of us started this resort for several reasons. At the turn of the twentieth century, Fox Lake was notorious for drinking and gambling. During Prohibition, mobsters would use the resorts around here as hideouts.”

“Al Capone,” said Abigail. “You were serious about that, too.”

Emmett nodded. “But that’s not the real reason we started it. We wanted to say fuck you to the archangels who had a direct hand in our being banished to Earth.”

“Banished to Earth. What did you do?” Abigail was tempted to pinch herself. If this wasn’t a dream, she’d gone insane. That was the only explanation.

“We were sent here a year or so before Prohibition as part of a larger group of angels. Humans were becoming too violent in their opposition of booze. They hit the trees, but kept missing the forest. We were supposed to help guide them toward more peaceful demonstrations against vices.”

“Sent here by whom?”

Zach grinned. “Our boss, Abigail. Who do you think would send us?”

“So what happened?” Their story was getting interesting. And when they finished, she’d drive into Chicago and get a CT scan.

“We went a little nuts,” said Emmet. “We drank a lot and seduced women, eventually discovering how much more they enjoyed it when…when two of us would share one.”

Heat rushed up from Abigail’s abdomen, over her neck, and onto her face. There was no way to stop it. Images of fucking Emmett and Zach ran through her mind. Breathing became difficult as she remembered her lovemaking with each of them. How much more intense and erotic would it be with both?

“We were punished for our sins by being cast down to Earth for the remainder of eternity,” said Zach. “Oh, and for shits and giggles, we can’t reproduce. That little codicil was courtesy of Lilith.”

“The person you named the resort after?”

“Her choice, not ours. It was either that or she’d burn the place down.”

A shiver ran through Abigail. “What did you do to her?”

He and Emmett exchanged a dark glance. “We rebuked her favors.”

“So, you’re really not related then?”

“Well,” said Zach, “not in the usual way, no. We use that as an explanation for the surnames and obvious similarities in the publicly displayed photos.” He glanced at Emmett. “Although, most of our guests don’t look too closely, so we aren’t questioned that often. The surnames of Fallon and Neville are twists on the words ‘fallen’ and ‘Nephilim.’”

She nodded. “Very clever. Does the staff know? What about the guests who start asking?”

“The staff knows. The guests…it depends. We don’t tell everyone. If they ask, we try to determine first how likely they are to become upset or afraid before we explain.”

“So, that means you must have assumed I’d be able to handle it.”

“We knew you could.”

“Lucky me. That’s some story, Zach.”

“You don’t believe us,” said Emmett.

“Emmett, I’m not sure what to believe right now.”

The temperature in the room seemed to have gone up at least ten degrees. Abigail excused herself and crossed to the kitchenette to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge. When she returned, she leaned against the wall for support. The air still had that electrical charge to it, and even though the drapes were open and sunlight streamed in, the room appeared dark to her. All she saw clearly were Zach and Emmett’s eyes.

Memories assaulted her in quick flashes, as if she were watching one of those revolving mirror balls or a strobe light. Each time it pulsed, a new image came to mind: Emmett’s hair standing on end outside the dining room, Zach’s touch sending jolts of heat throughout her body, their stamina while making love, and the things they’d said about this resort in the twenties.

“You talked about this place as though you’d lived through it, not like it was a story that had been passed on.”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until she heard Emmett’s voice. “That’s because we did live through it. Abigail, what can we say to convince you we’re not lying?”

“I know that what I saw in the photograph looked like you and Zach, but it was grainy.”

“It’s us. We can show you about a thousand more pictures if you’d like.”

“Why do you keep those books around where anyone can find them?”

Zach grimaced and cocked his thumb toward Emmett. “Genius here has been promising to move them for decades.”

Emmett grinned. “Most of our guests don’t go looking for books to read.”

Abigail took a seat again on the sofa, placing one leg under the other. “So let me see if I have this straight. There were twelve of you. You were supposed to help the people in the early nineteen hundreds find a more…delicate way of expressing their dislike of booze, but you got caught up in the whole scene yourselves. Your hormones got the better of you, and because of that, you were punished. So, what’s the punishment? Seems to me you have the best of both worlds. You can’t get anyone pregnant, and you always have a hotel full of horny, willing women.”

Zach cleared his throat, and Emmett shifted in his seat.

“It’s true that we’re free to spend eternity engaging in our favorite vice,” said Zach, “but it brings us no permanent satisfaction. We can’t be with human women in anything more than a fling. If we fall in love and choose a mortal existence, we have to…” He glanced at Emmett, who nodded. “We have to convince her to enter into a relationship with two of us. Obviously not marriage—there are bigotry laws. But even if we choose that mortal existence with a woman, we still can’t reproduce.”

“So either way, we don’t really win,” said Emmett. “Having to share her is a constant reminder of our sins.”

“And as if this weren’t fucked up enough, choosing a mortal existence is the only way we can earn redemption,” said Zach.

Abigail swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. Harsh didn’t even begin to describe such a fate. “But what happens if you choose to stay like this?”

Emmett shrugged. “Nothing. We just keep going, never satisfied and never having more than temporary flings.”

“But you didn’t care about that at first, right?”

Zach shook his head, and Emmett averted his gaze. “No,” he said. “It took a while before we started to grow weary of it.”

“Six of us have already chosen mortal lives,” said Zach.

“Leonard and Andras?” asked Abigail. “They looked older in that photograph.”

“Yes,” said Zach. “They were the first two.”

She looked from one man to the other. “Are you both weary of this now?”

They exchanged a glance, and Zach grimaced. “I think we all are, although not each of us is ready to admit that.”

“Tiffany said you have over fifteen hundred guests come through here each year. I’m assuming most of those are female, right? If you’re tired of this, why not simply choose one?” The sudden surge of jealousy coursing through her took her by surprise. Why should she care what they did with other women? It’s not as if she’d come here looking for a permanent lover, let alone two.

Zach leaned forward, wafting his delicious baked-apples-and-cinnamon scent her way. Instead of making her hungry, she was seized with a compulsion to run her fingers through his wavy hair. Abigail took a deep breath and tried to tamp down her raging hormones. At least now she had an explanation for the effect these two had over her. That is, if she chose to believe their story.

“We’ve backed ourselves into a corner, Abigail. We started this resort as a lark, and a way to indulge in our vices despite our punishment. But now it’s come back to bite us in the ass. Women come up here—most women, that is—for one reason only. They use us, and then they leave. They tell their friends, and their friends come up here and do the same thing.”

He exhaled loudly. Several emotions crossed his face, including regret. “We both admit we chose this fate. You won’t get an argument there from either of us. But every time someone different comes along, hope begins to build.”

“Someone different?”

“Someone who doesn’t use us like sex toys,” said Emmett. “Someone who talks to us and cares what we think and how we feel.”

“But you’ve worked hard to maintain the reputation of this place,” she said. “How can you expect anyone to react differently?”

Emmett nodded. “I know. Quite a catch twenty-two, isn’t it?” His grin sent a flood of warm wetness to her panties.

She drained her bottle of water and rose from the sofa. “I need another one. You want one?”

They didn’t answer. Abigail took another bottled water out of the fridge and closed the door. She stared at it, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do with the information they’d just given her. This trip had taken more than one unexpected turn. What was next? Flying saucers and vampires? Nothing would surprise her at this point.