New York Read online

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  A Totally Bound Publication

  New York

  ISBN # 978-1-78184-887-6

  ©Copyright Tiffany Aaron 2013

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright December 2013

  Edited by Rebecca Douglas

  Totally Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2013 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Sizzling and a Sexometer of 1.

  This story contains 88 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 11 pages.

  Fallen

  NEW YORK

  Tiffany Aaron

  Book five in the Fallen series

  His heart isn’t the only thing Christian might end up losing when he falls for Joan.

  Being an Enforcer isn’t helping Christian Vosberg hold on to his compassion for the mortals he’s supposed to protect. He’s going through the motions of living and obeying his orders.

  Joan Fisher helps the street people of New York City to give them the same chance that she received all those years ago. She understands how compassion can give someone the strength to hang on until things get better.

  When Christian meets Joan, he doesn’t know that she’s the one who will bring him back from the brink. All he knows is that she is beautiful and caring. He begins to find his own heart again.

  But when a debt Joan owes comes due, Christian finds himself in danger of losing more than just his heart.

  Dedication

  For those of you who fell in love with Christian and wanted him to have his own love.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Rolex: Rolex SA

  Jaguar F-Type S: Jaguar Land Rover Ltd

  Wikipedia: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

  Versace: Gianni Versace S.p.A.

  Rubik’s Cube: Ideal Toy Company

  Waldorf-Astoria: Hilton Worldwide

  Chapter One

  The lights of New York shone like small, brilliant diamonds on black velvet. Christian studied the city below him as he stood on the roof of his apartment building. So much had changed over the centuries he’d lived and the city had grown. He remembered being there when the Statue of Liberty had risen above Ellis Island. He was there the day the Twin Towers had been brought down by bad men intent on hurting innocents.

  He sipped at his scotch, thinking about Chicago and what had gone on there. Seeing Lucifer face-to-face again had cracked the carefully constructed walls around Christian’s sanity. The worse thing he’d seen was his own downfall reflected in Lucifer’s black eyes. Over the centuries, Christian had seen his own eyes darken from bright blue to midnight blue as he’d began to lose whatever humanity he had.

  Sighing, Christian shook his head. Could angels have humanity? Well, he was losing his sympathy for the mortals he lived amongst, and that scared him. He didn’t want to become like the unrepentants he punished. Yet as hard as he fought to not fall over the edge into that abyss, it was becoming a slippery balancing act.

  As he contemplated getting another drink, he felt a sudden influx of power, strong enough to almost drive him to his knees. He grimaced, knowing who had just arrived to visit him.

  “Would you like a drink, Mika’il?” He didn’t turn to look at the archangel, annoyed that Mika’il felt he could just come and go as he pleased.

  “No. I don’t know why any of you insist on drinking when it does nothing to you. You can’t get drunk, so why waste the time?” Mika’il walked up beside him, then sighed. “I don’t know that they’ll ever get used to the new skyline.”

  “It’s different, but within a couple of years, no one will think anything of it. Change happens, whether they are prepared for it or not.” Christian held up his glass. “We drink to fit in. It is a very human activity, and we don’t want to stick out amongst the crowd.”

  Mika’il pursed his lips, but didn’t look convinced. Christian gritted his teeth, not feeling up to dealing with Mika’il at the moment.

  “What do you want?” He tossed the glass into the air, and with a simple wave of his hand, made it disappear.

  “Don’t you want to fit in? Doing things like that stands out, Christian,” the angel pointed out.

  Christian shrugged. “There’s no one up here to see us. I could run around naked, and no one would care.”

  “Heck, you could do that down on the streets, and the single thing that might happen is you’d be propositioned by someone.” Mika’il chuckled. “I have to admit, that’s one of the things I like about this city. Nothing fazes people here. They go on living their lives, no matter what. It’s like they won’t let anything keep them down for long.”

  “Why are you here, Mika’il?”

  “I can’t come to visit one of my friends?”

  Christian rolled his eyes. “You and I haven’t been friends since I fell, plus you don’t visit people for idle chit-chat.”

  “Maybe I’m starting a new practice,” Mika’il commented.

  “Just stop dancing around the subject and tell me what you want, Mika’il. It’s going to piss me off, isn’t it?” Christian clenched his hands then shoved them in the pockets of his pants.

  Mika’il shifted like he was unhappy with Christian’s tone. “What makes you say that?”

  “You normally just show up, throw me orders then disappear. I’ve never seen you uneasy or uncomfortable about anything.” Christian frowned. “Why didn’t you show up in Chicago?”

  “Couldn’t. Had other things to do. Besides, you all had it under control. I knew you could handle Lucifer.” Mika’il rubbed his chin then said, “I need you to check some warehouses on the river. There’s been some activity around the abandoned buildings that I don’t like.”

  Christian laughed. “There have been suspicious things happening in them since they were abandoned, Mika’il. Are you going to tell me what has you so uneasy?”

  “No. Just go there, and be careful. There have been reports of some unrepentants in the area as well.”

  Christian snarled before saying, “There won’t be any when I get done over there.”

  Mika’il slapped him on the shoulder. “Which is why I’
m sending you instead of one of the lesser Enforcers. These particular fallen seem to be banding together and I don’t like that.”

  With that rather cryptic statement, Mika’il disappeared, leaving Christian to wonder how unrepentants had managed to not kill each other long enough to band together. Hell, they usually tried to eliminate other fallen before going after mortals. Christian had never understood why, but Mika’il just said it was like territorial lions. They fought to protect what they consider theirs, which could be anything.

  He imagined his bedroom in the penthouse below him, and a flash of power sent him there. Once he’d finished stripping, he strolled into the bathroom. He would take a shower before heading out again. Having just arrived back from Chicago, he hadn’t had time to do anything except get a drink before Mika’il had shown up.

  Bracing his hands against the tile of his shower, he let his head drop forward. He hated taking orders from the archangel, yet he knew he couldn’t tell him no. Not after accepting the brand of an Enforcer, and turning into judge and jury against his fellow fallen.

  Falling with the others wasn’t the best decision I could’ve made. Christian grunted in annoyance. The secret most of the others didn’t know was that he hadn’t fallen because he’d believed in Daystar’s idiotic babble about being more important than mortals. No. Christian had fallen because he believed in God’s forgiveness, and wanted to prove that God loved his angels enough to forgive their rebellion.

  He snatched up the soap with a sharp hiss of anger. Little had he known that there would be no forgiveness for the angels who chose to rebel in Heaven. He forgives mortals so easily for far worse crimes, yet He denies us the hope of returning to Heaven because we wanted to be more important to Him than mortals.

  After rinsing the lather from his body, he climbed out then turned the water off. He shoved the troubling memories of his fall to the back of his mind. While toweling down, he thought about which warehouses Mika’il meant. Christian had felt a small build-up of power rising from a group of abandoned buildings on the Hudson before he’d left for Chicago.

  He paused in the middle of pulling a pair of briefs from his dresser. He’d sent Phillip down to check it out, but hadn’t heard back from the other Enforcer. Once he was completely dressed, he wandered out into his living room to find his keys and wallet. While he didn’t normally drive around the city, he felt the need to be out among the mortals he was supposed to protect.

  As he waited in the corridor for the lift, he tugged out his phone then dialed Phillip’s number. His call went to voicemail, and a hint of concern began to swell inside Christian. None of the Enforcers under him would dare miss one of his calls—he’d put the fear of him in them from the moment Mika’il had put him in charge of the entire East Coast contingent.

  “Phillip, call me as soon as you can. I need to know what you found out about that power build-up.” Christian ended the call.

  He climbed into the lift then punched the button for the lobby. While heading down, he decided to call Samantha, another Enforcer who had been a partner of sorts to Phillip. She answered after two rings.

  “Hello, sir.” Nothing in her voice gave away how she felt about him calling her.

  “I need to talk to Phillip. I sent him to do a job for me, and I haven’t heard from him since then.” Niceties were beyond him. He didn’t care whether the fallen he worked with liked him or not, and his indifference had grown over the years.

  He sensed a hesitation from Samantha before she replied, “I haven’t seen Phillip in a week or so, sir. He seems to have disappeared shortly after you gave him his orders.”

  “Fuck. Did he even do what I asked him to do before then? Why didn’t you contact me earlier about this?”

  Christian stalked across the lobby toward the parking garage. It was one of the few places in downtown Manhattan that still had its own parking area. That was because Christian owned the property, and hadn’t been willing to get rid of it. He needed a place close by to park his vehicles—it was a huge bonus for the rest of the mortals who lived in the apartment building.

  “You were in Chicago, and I didn’t want to bother you about it. I’m not sure, sir.” She didn’t call him a bastard for not being more concerned about Phillip’s welfare, but Christian could tell she wanted to. “I do know that the night he vanished, he was going to head out to the docks to start looking into what you wanted.”

  “Hmm…and when was that?” He hit his key fob to unlock his car, then slid behind the wheel. He didn’t start the engine, wanting to finish his conversation with Samantha before going anywhere.

  “I believe it was the same night you ordered him to go look, sir.” Again there was no inflection in her voice, but for some reason, Christian had the feeling that she blamed him for Phillip being gone.

  “All right. Did Phillip say anything to you before he left?”

  “Not that I can remember, sir.”

  Christian frowned, then said, “If you can think of anything he might have said before he headed out, let me know.” He hung up then tossed his phone onto the seat next to him.

  Phillip missing didn’t sound promising, and while Christian didn’t care one way or another whether Phillip was around or not, he did want to know if Phillip was taken or if he chose to leave. Of course, if he’d left, Phillip was supposed to have told Christian that he was going.

  “You don’t believe he took off,” Christian muttered aloud as he started the car.

  After pulling out of the underground parking garage, he turned in the direction of the docks. Something had happened to Phillip, and Christian had the feeling it had to do with the unrepentants. The less powerful Enforcer was scared of Christian, and he wouldn’t go anywhere outside the city without Christian’s permission.

  The closer he got to the abandoned warehouses along the river, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. Christian curled his upper lip in a snarl at unrepentants who thought they could get away with gathering in his territory.

  Yet it was unusual to have so many fallen in one spot. The fallen who had gone over the edge tended to become solitary as they hunted among the mortals. Paranoia grew as the madness did until they would try to kill each other.

  Could Lucifer have anything to do with the gathering? If so, what was Lucifer up to? Was he finally planning to take over the world starting with New York?

  Christian frowned as he pulled up in front of one of the empty buildings. Fallen had been there, but they had either left or moved on because the skin-crawling feeling he normally associated with them wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been elsewhere. He climbed from the car then stretched while studying the area around him.

  The stench of garbage and unwashed bodies filled his nostrils and he fought back the urge to gag. More than fallen called this place home, which didn’t surprise Christian that much. The homeless on the streets of New York City needed to find places to spend the cold winter nights. They also needed to find places to hide when the police came to roust them out of the parks.

  He’d lived in the city long enough to have seen the increase in the street people who called abandoned places like this home, and had lost his compassion for them. Christian didn’t understand why they didn’t make their own lives better by finding jobs and homes. It wasn’t that complicated to choose not to live like this.

  “Hey, honey, you looking for some company?”

  Turning around, he barely managed to keep the disgust from showing on his face. The girl couldn’t have been any older than nineteen or twenty. Her ragged, dirty clothes barely covered the most private parts of her body. Even though she stood in a shadowed alley a few feet from him, Christian could see her clearly, and he shuddered.

  The whore was skinny to the point of starvation, the bones in her wrists and hips sticking out. The scabs on her arms and legs told him her story. Another mortal who had lost her battle with heroin, and had decided the drug was better than anything else in her life. She would give him a blowjob or let
him fuck her for the money she needed for her next fix.

  Christian no longer cared why they chose to numb their lives with drugs. Why getting lost in the haze of heroin or meth made their lives better, he didn’t understand, and no longer wanted to.

  “I’m not interested,” he said, looking away from her to study the building again.

  “Come on, mister. I’ll make it worth your time.”

  “Shouldn’t you be making it worth my money?”

  Why are you talking to her? Just get the job done and get the hell home.

  He sensed her confusion at his question, but before he could clarify it, and maybe see if she had any brain cells left, three people came walking down the sidewalk. Christian looked them over, but since they were only human, he didn’t have anything to worry from them. He started to make his way toward the warehouse.

  “Mindy, are you okay?”

  Something about the voice that spoke the gentle question froze Christian in his tracks. His heart skipped a beat, and his cock hardened in a way that it hadn’t in years. Every atom in his body was on alert to hear more of that voice.

  Whirling around, he found the trio standing next to the alleyway, and the male of the group glared at him in an attempt to scare him while the two women talked to the whore. Totally unconcerned about the man, Christian strolled over to where they were gathered.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The women turned to look at him. The guy was tall and muscular, obviously there for protection. The woman was short and curvy with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. As big as the guy was, Christian got the feeling he needed to worry more about this petite female.

  The taller brunette didn’t glance at him as she kept her attention on Mindy. Christian had never liked being ignored, and for some reason it was worse when this woman did it.

  “I’m fine, Joan. Just chatting with that fellow. Trying to work out a price.”

  Christian huffed in annoyance. “We weren’t working out a price. I have never paid for sex, and I’m not about to now.”