74
an excerpt

Soundlessly, I lift myself up and pull my hand away from Jojo’s. Her protest is soft and weak, and I rearrange the duvet carefully around her. She tosses her head and sleeps on. I slide myself forward and walk naked to the other side of the room, letting my hand skim over the hem of the curtains. The shadows outside are still, with the morning fluttering limply over the London skyline. I pluck my jeans off the floor and pull them loosely around my hips, neglecting to fasten them. I brush the curtain aside with my bare foot, and outside the shapes start to move.

Working with my eyes shut, I find the latch and open up the French doors, letting the hatched shadows move across the room and the light glow behind my eyelids. The soft incandescence floods under my eyelashes as I open them to look out onto the balcony.

Woods is perched on the broken stone, balanced on the balls of his bare feet.

“Nice…” The fucker is watching me with his hand on the bulge in his jeans. “Shut the doors before she gets cold.”

I realise he’s been looking through at Jojo, who has turned in her sleep so the duvet fallen away from her body. One breast, with its rosy pink nipple, is exposed over the softness of the bed, and from here I can see the goosebumps rise on her skin. She gives a little moan as she twists again, her hand falling from the pillow and her tangle of dusky red hair onto her chest. Her fingers curl across her collarbone, and she tips her head to the side as we watch, her mouth open like a cat’s. I twitch, and pull the doors shut.

“Do you love her?”

It hangs there between us and I refuse to look at him, watching the shadowed paleness of Jojo lounging in sleep.

“No,” I say shortly, cruelly. “No I don’t.”

Woods looks at me carefully. As angels go, he’s quite perceptive.

“Fuck off,” I tell him quietly.

He shrugs, and starts to play with his toes. He lets his hair hang limply around his face. Woods is pretty – he has a smooth, chiselled face that could belong to a woman, with big eyes that drop down at the corners. He looks constantly tired and constantly sad.

“You should let her go.”

He’s told me this before. Fucking angels, they come here and interfere with me and my doings. I never sought them out. I never even knew before they started following me around like fucking dogs.

“You going to make me?” I sneer at him, turning away to look out over the city. “What do you want?”

Woods smiles absently. “Nothing.” I turn in time to see his grinning face as he lets himself fall backwards off the balcony. For a moment, I see nothing, and I think that he’s fallen to his death. Then he swoops back up on his vast, grey-feathered wings, the tips shining with the early-morning sunlight.

“Holland!” he yells at me, nodding conspiratorially while he hovers at eye-level. In another instant, he is gone.

I loathe angels.