Nyalla raced through the door, tossing her packages on the sofa and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Sorry, sorry. I tried to hurry, but there was a line and–”

He was gone. Panic gripped her chest. He was gone, ropes and duct-tape rolled in a stack on the floor, collar on the dresser, a pair of her underwear neatly folded at the end of the bed. Oh sweet Goddess, was that what she’d stuck in his mouth? Her face burned at the thought. She’d stuck a pair of panties in his mouth — and they weren’t even a pair of clean ones, either.

“Do you have any idea what the maids thought when they saw me there?”

His voice was deep with barely repressed violence. Nyalla turned slowly and saw him, one shoulder against the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. He was completely healed, his clothing as though he’d just picked it up from the drycleaner, his hair neatly spiked. The thought flickered through her mind that she’d like it better mussed.

The idea went right out of her head as he uncrossed his arms and walked toward her like a tiger stalking prey.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to cleanse their thoughts from my mind. The things those women were imagining about me and you were downright salacious.”

She could believe that. Nyalla had watched her fair share of porn when she’d arrived from Hel not knowing one bit about human lives and culture here. Now he wasn’t the only one who had images of wild sexual bondage going through their mind. Mmmmm. Maybe with a whip instead of the frying pan? She could wear those amazing boots that she could barely walk in and make him kneel before her.

Or not. Nyalla came to her senses and retreated in step with his advance until her back hit the wall. This wasn’t good. He was going to kill her, and instead of planning a viable counterattack that would allow her to escape unharmed, she was fantasizing about tying him back to the bed and taking his clothes off. Slowly. And then licking every inch of his skin.

“You incapacitated me, taped me to the bed, put your intimate apparel in my mouth, then left me for those women to find.” His arms came out on either side of her shoulders, imprisoning her. “What punishment is suitable for such actions? Hmmm?”

Holy Mother. What was he going to do? Probably not what she wanted him to do. Nyalla summoned up her courage and took a deep breath — which rubbed her breasts along his chest.

“I found you uninvited in my room, going through my private belongings. What punishment is suitable for your actions?”

She caught a flicker of something in his eyes — shame? Then they hardened back to dark azure.

“Maybe I should hit you with a large, heavy, cooking utensil,” he whispered.

So much for his never hurting her, although all bets had probably been off after she’d walloped him into unconsciousness. He leaned in closer to her and growled — growled, pressing the length of his body against hers. He didn’t have a frying pan handy, but judging from the spark of anger in those gorgeous eyes, she was sure he had something equally painful planned.

She needed to get out of here. Relaxing her body, she became soft, pliant beneath him, looking innocently into his eyes. Then she drove her knee into his crotch. He dropped like a stone and she ran, almost making it out of the bedroom before tripping on her discarded bag and crashing to the floor.

It gave the demon just enough time to recover and spring on her. Once again she was sprawled across the carpet with him on top of her, although this time his face wasn’t buried between her legs.

“Or maybe I’ll tie you to the bed and stuff clothing into your mouth. Leave you here for the maids to find tomorrow morning. Huh?”

Nyalla frantically tried to wiggle out from under him, but only managed to get one arm free. Patting it behind her, she tried to grab something, anything she could use to defend herself.

“I do think some punishment is in order here, some level of atonement.”

Her heart skittered. When demons started talking about punishment, the odds of walking away alive dramatically dropped. Her hand groped and touched the edge of her bag, felt the softness of the fabric, the edge of her cell phone, and something hard and dowel-like. Gritting her teeth, she curled her fingers around the stick and swung.

* * *

What was he doing? He had fallen into the sin of anger, and stooped to physically restraining and threatening a human woman. Angels should not do such things, and as an archangel he should be far above such behavior. Gabriel struggled to push down the cold fury that had possessed him, and truly saw the woman under him. Stars above, she was terrified. He’d lowered himself to threatening and frightening a weak little human. A wave of shame rolled through him and the angel opened his mouth to apologize.

Before the words left his mouth, something hard and stick-like swung toward his head. He shot out a hand and grabbed it. It seemed like an ineffectual weapon for her to use on him, but judging how he’d been rendered completely helpless by a silver collar, he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Adun easteth athes driftunga durft.” she shouted.

He blinked. Elvish? She’d said something in Elvish that sounded suspiciously like the words ‘descend to the fires of an inferno, you excrement of a durft’. At the same time she said the words, she yanked, trying to pull the stick from his grip. He held on, twisting. It snapped between Gabriel’s fingers, and he barely had time to register the sound before the pain hit.

It was nothing like he’d ever felt before. The hidden wings vanished from his back, and light dimmed around him. His spirit-self fractured into tiny shards and embedded agonizingly into each and every cell. His vision narrowed, fading before bursting into a million colors so bright that he needed to shut his eyes. Sound thumped through his ears, and the smell of the ocean and warm human flesh filled each breath.

Then something beyond his spirit-self shattered, his restraint and control snapping, cracking. It felt as if his entire soul opened wide and allowed everything to rush inside. Hurt. Shame. Doubt. Fear. Envy. Anger. Pride. Sorrow. Regret. It all broke free from the cage where he’d buried it and rushed its way back into his heart.

Hands pushed at him.

“Get off me. By the Goddess, you weigh a freaking ton. Why are you so heavy? Oh sweet Mother, you broke the wand. You broke it.” Her words choked on something that sounded like a sob. “It’s broken and I needed it.”

The human woman. It was her heartbeat filling his ears, her scent in his lungs. He’d collapsed on top of her, his weight pinning her to the ground. Rolling off to the side, he sat up and stared at his hands. It was like when he’d had the collar on only a thousand times worse. He could feel everything, hear, see, and smell everything in agonizing detail. His flesh had taken on a tanned cast. Something inside him grumbled and twisted.

“What did you do?” he whispered. Anger was beyond him at this point. Instead he felt…fear? Where were his wings? By everything holy where were his wings?

“Me? Me? I didn’t do anything. Well, I wanted to do something, but you broke the wand, you stupid oaf.”

“A wand.” Aaru above. Broken magical devices released all their charges at once, sometimes amplifying the effect dramatically. “What was this wand supposed to do?”

“Turn demons into a human for twenty-four hours. I needed that in case…well, I needed it and now you’ve broken it.” She picked up the two pieces of wand and held them together, biting her lower lip when it began to quiver.

“How many charges did it have?” Hopefully he could shake this off in less than twenty-four hours or this whole trip would be a waste of time. He could hardly track and punish a rebel angel while he was a human. And why were his insides making that noise? It was quite uncomfortable.

Her lip quivered again. “Twenty. It was very expensive. And I needed it.” She turned to him, her eyes narrowing, and that trembling lip thinning. “You will reimburse me for it. You broke it. You buy it. That’s a human law here. I found that one out the hard way.”

“I am not paying for a broken wand,” he retorted. “I didn’t intentionally break it. You were attacking me and I was simply trying to disarm you. Defending myself does not obligate me to pay reparations.”

“You most certainly did intentionally break it,” she snapped back. “You twisted it. What do you expect a piece of wood to do when some muscle-bound idiot tries to turn it into a pretzel? And besides that, the self-defense excuse is phoo-hockey. You were in my room uninvited, going through my personal belongings. I have a right to expect privacy, and you were trespassing. When I subdued you and tried to run, you tackled me. You’re like a gazillion times more powerful than I am. I’m the one who was acting in self-defense, not you.”

“Phoo-hockey? What does that even mean? And at the time of the tackling incident, I was not a gazillion times more powerful than you, however much a gazillion might be. You’d put some repulsive collar thing on me and refused to take it off.”

“And when the maids freed you and took it off, did you leave?” she snapped. “No, you didn’t. You stayed behind and lay in wait for me. In spite of your promises, you intended to do me harm, and at that time, you were a gazillion times more powerful than me.”

“You made me angry.” That was a horrible excuse. He was an archangel. He shouldn’t be so readily tempted into the mortal sin of anger. This was his fault. And he would gladly have done penance for his actions, but this wasn’t the time. Tura was once again going to slip through his fingers. It might take years for him to track him down again. It might take decades. And after absorbing a minimum of twenty-times a magical spell, he was unlikely to recover in the next three days.

He’d be lucky to recover in the next month. Actually he’d be lucky to recover at all. The thought was chilling.

The woman sighed, running her fingers through her long, dark-blond hair. “I overreacted. When I saw you I should have just run for it. I guess I was angry too. And I can’t completely blame you for being angry after I bashed you in the head with a frying pan and tied you to my bed.”

And put that repulsive collar on him. And put those not-so-repulsive pair of tiny pants in his mouth.

“I’m sorry.” The woman shook her head. “If I could take it back, I would. If I could do something to make up for it, I would. I’m sorry.”

How horrible was it that a human woman apologized for her sin of anger, and he hadn’t yet done so? So much for being an archangel. Guilt wracked him. Whatever had happened, this was his own fault. Scaring a human, then blaming her for his own sin. How base of him.

“You said you were going to punish me. I know what demons do when they punish, and I was scared, otherwise I would never have gotten the wand out of my purse.” she continued. “But collaring you and whacking you with the fry pan — that was my fault and I’m sorry.”

Wait, demons? “I’m not a demon. I’m an angel,” Gabriel told her. He’d deal with whatever she’d done to him later. Right now his priority had to be making this whole thing right with this human and trying to atone for losing his temper and threatening her.

Her eyes widened. “No! You can’t be! Angels don’t break into people’s rooms, root through their underwear like perverts, then pin them to the floor. Angels don’t threaten to harm people.”

In all his four billion years, Gabriel had never felt so small, so unevolved. “It’s me that should be apologizing. I’m not used to manifesting in a human form, and I’m afraid I let the sensations and emotions get the better of me. Please forgive me.” He took a deep breath, steeling himself for his next words. “I am the archangel Gabriel, member of the Ruling Council of Angels, and the third eldest angel in all of Aaru and I deeply regret my actions.”

The woman looked at him in horror. “Gabriel? Not that Gabriel? The one with a stick up his butt? The pompous, sanctimonious, jerk? The smug, self-righteous, intolerably boring Gabriel?”

“No, I am not any of those things.” He scowled. Who had been saying those horrible and untrue things about him? Actually, he knew who had been saying those things, and the very next Ruling Council meeting he was going to have some words with her. Or possibly smash a pastry in her face. “I am the Exalted, Ancient and Revered Archangel Gabriel, Guardian of the Truth, the Ancient Messenger.”

She blinked at him in surprise. “Are there more titles you’ve let out of that list? Surely you have more than just the four. Or was that five?”

Was she laughing at him? “I do have more, but it seemed pompous to be reciting all thirty at this particular time.”

She was laughing at him, the hussy. But just as quickly her smile faded and a look of dread settled across her face. “The archangel Gabriel? I hit an archangel on the head with a frying pan. By the Goddess, I am in such trouble.”

“It was my own fault. There is no blame to you in this matter.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You can’t be held responsible for your behavior. You’re just a human, and thus vulnerable to wild emotional responses, poor decision-making, with a proclivity toward sin. Such an unevolved being with a low vibration pattern and paltry intelligence shouldn’t be expected to overcome their sense of fear and need for self-preservation. You’re not to blame for this.”

“Why thank you,” she drawled. Was that a note of sarcasm in her voice? “This unevolved, lesser being still feels she bears some blame for your circumstances. If there is anything I can do to make amends, I’d be happy to do so.”

Again, he felt guilty. He should be the one apologizing. He should be the one offering to make amends. But all he could think of now was how Tura was once again going to get away and escape punishment. “There is nothing a human can do to help me. I’m an angel. I do not need a human’s help.”

She shook her head. “But you’re no longer an angel. I’ve taken your grace. You’re not an angel any more, you’re a human.”

That part of his midsection that had been grumbling and twisting solidified into a cold hard lump as her words sunk in. Gabriel looked at his hands, wondering why they were trembling. Well Gabe, you idiot. You knew sin had a heavy price, just not quite this heavy.