Gabriel turned and handed Abaddon the warm, gooey sandwich, his brain already filled with illicit images of breadcrumbs tumbling down the powerful chest.
The plate was out of his hand, and the sandwich made it to Abaddon’s mouth in record-breaking time, lighting up the angel’s face as if he’d just transcended. “Oh yes, I fucking love PB n’J!” he exclaimed, already chewing.
Gabriel stalled and cocked his head. “You do? They have it in Hell?” Something was off, but maybe just because none of this could be real. Of course ‘his’ version of an angel would like the food Gabriel made.
Then again, if Abaddon was in fact a real man putting on an act for some bizarre reason, then… had Gabriel helped him hide the evidence of a murder?
A stormy cloud passed through Abaddon’s eyes, making them resemble twin tornadoes about to suck in Gabriel’s soul, but the angel shrugged and took another bite before swallowing the first one.
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Dunno.”
The urge to please reared its head at this hint of annoyance. “I made the jam myself last year. Even harvested the strawberries.”
The storm was gone from the handsome face as if blown away by this gust of enthusiasm. “I feel like I’m already back in Heaven. You are a good boy,” Abaddon said and tapped Gabriel’s chin as he continued eating, still hot as all hell.
A shiver went down Gabriel’s spine, and he leaned in, wanting to be a “good boy” in any capacity Abaddon wished for. And while Gabriel had unexpectedly found himself locked in a small room with a naked stranger, nothing about his actions set off alarms in his head. Even though they ought to have been blaring.
When he smiled and glanced to his feet in a bout of shyness, he got another eyeful of the angel’s cock, so he respectfully looked right back at the angular face. “I’ll clean up while you shower. I want you to feel comfortable for as long as you need to stay.”
The heat inside him was so intense he wished to take off his hoodie, but that would have exposed the many scars on his arms, so he settled on unzipping it for now.
Abaddon shoved the remaining sandwich into his mouth, transforming into a hamster-angel hybrid, then proceeded to give Gabriel a thumbs up before spinning on his heel to head off to the bathroom.
Gabriel held his breath, half-expecting the angel’s muscular buttocks to be as tattooed as the rest of his body, but they’d been left bare of ink, which only made their pallor stand out more.
Shaken by the brief encounter with another man’s casual nakedness, Gabriel grabbed a cigarette as soon as the shower was on in the bathroom. The sound of falling water reminded him that the angel didn’t disappear from his mind just because he was now out of sight.
He opened the window and leaned against it, trying to think now that the heavenly body was out of reach. The pastries had been meant for later in the day and Robin, the assistant cook, would pick up the slack in the kitchen left by Mr. Watson’s absence. But sooner or later, someone would come looking for Gabriel. It wouldn’t have been the first time he lacked the will to get out of bed in the morning, and as long as he gave a believable excuse, no one interrogated him too much about it, understanding that his mental condition was fragile enough to need coddling at times.
But before he could have finished his lazy smoke, the bathroom door opened, and Abaddon entered in a cloud of vapor, as naked as when he’d left.
Desire crawled up Gabriel’s back, rendering him mute and motionless as the angel stepped toward him with water dripping from the long, dark tresses and cock. The world beyond them disappeared, and all he could hear was the soft pad of damp feet across the floor. By the time the bare stomach, thighs, cock, and balls were close enough to touch, Gabriel was too stunned to breathe. Fear and excitement whirled deep inside him, and when Abaddon’s big hand reached to his face, he let his eyes shut, awaiting his sentence.
The cigarette was unceremoniously pulled out of his mouth and then tossed out of the window before he could inhale enough air to protest.
“Those aren’t good for you,” Abaddon said.
Gabriel stood there, stunned. “I… They are. They help me calm down. Even my doctor says I can have one every now and then.”
Abaddon shook his head. “If you continue smoking those, you will get sick. There are better ways to calm your nerves.”
Gabriel wanted to protest, rebel, pull out another one, but Abaddon’s presence stopped him, so he asked, “Why do you care?”
“Because you deserve happiness and comfort.”
An answer so simple, yet so hard to comprehend. Why would he deserve any of that? He hadn’t done anything special in life. He was a burden on the system, on the generosity of the directors of St. John’s, who kept him safe, and had been even kind enough to gift him Cloud after his breakdown years ago.