This morning, however, Nero saved me the trouble.
He grabbed Angel by the scruff of her neck, plucked her from my pillow, then set her down gently on the floor. He’d already learned not to fling her across the room. She was a really tough kitty and would always land gracefully on her feet, but she did not take kindly to being thrown. And she’d express that displeasure by shifting her torture tactics from me to him. My tough archangel husband put soldiers through brutal, inhuman training on a daily basis, but he could not long withstand my kitten’s nipping.
So after setting her down carefully on the floor, Nero used a psychic spell to nudge the balcony door open. Angel meowed in happy appreciation, then trotted outside for her morning hunt.
I watched him watch her, a grin taking over my face. “You’re smitten with my kitten.”
“I’m smitten with you, Pandora,” he growled, pinning my hands to the bed.
“Angel has won you over, admit it.”
Nero frowned. He’d never approved of the name I’d given my kitten. Well, it was a lot better than Creampuff, which was the name she’d had when she’d arrived to me in a shipping box.
“That cat is not genteel enough to be honored with the title of angel,” he declared.
“Neither am I.” I slipped free of his grip and reached up to wrap my arms around his back. “But I won you over in the end.”
He dipped his mouth to mine and gave me a quick, light kiss that left my lips tingling—and my body aching for more. “You have other redeeming qualities to make up for your total lack of propriety.”
“You thoroughly enjoyed my total lack of propriety last night.”
After coming home from Heaven’s Army, Nero and I had wasted no time in getting reacquainted. We hadn’t seen each other in a week, and we were newlyweds after all.
“There is a time and a place for everything,” he said silkily. “Something your cat should learn.”
“Oh, Angel knows all about that. For example, she knows it’s morning and that means breakfast time. Which she catches all by herself, by the way,” I said proudly. “She just needs a little help opening the door.”
“Perhaps opening doors should be the next thing you teach her. While you were away, she woke me up every morning to let her out.”
“A cat that can open doors? If she could do that, wouldn’t you consider her a security risk?”
He snorted. “I probably would. But I might be willing to overlook it for the greater good.”
“What greater good?”
“An angel does not enjoy being awoken from his slumber, and he always makes sure no one else enjoys their day either.”
I kissed him. “You’re grumpy when you’re tired.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But I’m grumpier when you’re away from me.”
“Were you this snippy with my soldiers while I was gone?”
During my week with Heaven’s Army, Nero had run my Legion office in Purgatory—and my territory. I didn’t have a cushy big-city territory with all the fixings like the other angels did. As the Angel of Chaos, my territory was the plains of monsters: the wild, beast-infested, catastrophic weather zones beyond the Magitech walls that separated civilization from the feral expanse.
“You’re distracted,” Nero observed.
I smirked at him. “You are very distracting.”
“This time, it’s something else. Something far less pleasant.”
I leaned on my side and draped my arm over my hip. “There aren’t many things in this world more pleasant than you, Nero Windstriker.”
His gaze panned down the length of my naked body, blue-silver flashing in his green eyes as he drank me in. Nero had a knack for making me feel like the center of his universe, and I loved him dearly for it.
“It’s Faris,” I sighed. There was magic in my father’s name. Just speaking it seemed to wash away all happiness and numb all joy. “He’s been in my dreams a lot lately. Or perhaps I should call them nightmares.”
“Last night too?” Nero asked.
“Yes. I dreamt of my last mission with Heaven’s Army. I just can’t stop thinking about it. I have this feeling I can’t shake, this feeling that Faris wanted me at the Choosing. My being there played into his plans somehow. I just don’t know how. I don’t even know what his plans are. Well, except for reigning supreme over every realm.”
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “We will figure it out.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because you’re very stubborn. And I’m very competent.”
I laughed, and his smile told me that was just the reaction he’d been going for.
“I wonder…” I met Nero’s eyes. “Is Faris really visiting me in my dreams? Or is it just my overly-active imagination running wild?”
“Hard to say. You keep people out of your head pretty well while you’re awake, but the dream world is another thing altogether. When we sleep, our defenses are weaker. It’s easier for people to get in.”
“The last thing I need right now is Faris or any other deity rummaging around in my mind.” I grabbed my phone off the nightstand because it had started ringing. “Hey, Lucy. So what’s today’s good news?”
Lucy was my personal assistant. She kept me organized because I was, well, not. Come on, they called me the Angel of Chaos, not the Angel of Ordered Lists.
“You’ve received a number of new petitions. Petition one is a request for soldiers to clear out a rogue vampire nest in Purgatory…”
Every time we clear out a nest, a new one always pops up the next day, I relayed to Nero.
Clearing out rogue vampires is like doing the dishes, he replied. No matter how many times you clean them, they always get dirty again.
Since when do you do the dishes? I teased.
He shrugged. More often than you, Pandora.
I bottled a chuckle. Lucy couldn’t hear us when we communicated like this, but her supernatural hearing could and would hear me giggle.
“…Petition number six is for a new childcare facility.”
How were we already at number six?
Maybe you should pay attention, Nero told me.
Maybe you should stop distracting me.
It’s not my fault that you’re naked.
Sure it is. I was dressed when I came home last night, I pointed out.
Fire flashed in his eyes, and a sexy smile twisted his lips.
“Petition number ten is a plea for a boutique shopping center to replace the town’s current shady shopping area.”
“Wait a minute,” I spoke into the phone. “Who’s calling the Bazaar shady?”
“Ivy.”
I grunted. “Figures.”
My friend Ivy loved shopping even more than she loved dressing up.
“Shall I continue?” Lucy asked me.
“Just how many more petitions are there for today?”
“The Purgatory office of the Legion of Angels received a total of one-hundred and fifty-two petitions yesterday.”
Splendid.
“I also have several reports regarding the conversion of the old district lords’ houses into Legion office space and public use buildings.”
Being an angel seemed like a lot more fun before I actually became one, I lamented. But it’s at least ninety percent bureaucracy. I’d rather sneak into a demon stronghold than deal with petitions and reports any day. Does that make me crazy?