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  Chandler flushed. “I asked him to the party!”

  “Well, yeah—and a thousand other people!”

  “Well, they were just an excuse to have him come over!” Chandler said defensively, thinking mournfully that it hadn’t worked very well, had it?

  Cristina patted his cheek, and he thought that for all her square features and flat little nose, she was actually sort of beautiful too. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t need an excuse. Maybe you should just ask him over!” There was a silence and someone laughed loudly from the other room, and she blinked. “Well, maybe not tonight,” she said apologetically. “Tonight it’s a little crowded.”

  Chandler wanted to see him so bad his chest hurt. “I could always go over there,” he said hopefully, and Cristina brightened.

  “Why not?” She grinned and batted her mascaraed eyelashes at him, and Chandler blushed.

  “Do you really think he’d want me to stop by?”

  “Yeah, Chandler. I think it would probably mean the world.”

  It was a nice night to walk, actually. April was always nice in Sacramento, and Bell Road was only a little scary. In the background, Chandler heard traffic sounds, and then the squealing of brakes and the crashing of something huge, but he kept walking. It was too far away for him to offer any timely help, but just close enough to make him grateful that he wasn’t involved. There were gunshots, too, and Chandler shuddered and walked faster. Cristina was so lucky nothing bad had happened to her while she was walking to his place. Chandler hoped she’d be okay running the party. He wasn’t too worried. He didn’t like mean people, or the stupid, careless people who would trash his place; it had been all music and happy laughter when he left, and he didn’t expect that to change.

  Engall and Cristina lived in a downscale apartment warren—Cristina had given him her key so he could open the gate and find his way in the labyrinth to their door. He paused for a moment before he knocked, and took a deep breath.

  Engall. God. What would his life be like if Engall didn’t like him back? For a moment, his courage failed him, and he’d taken a step backward to walk away and call the whole thing a wash when he felt something like a smack to the back of his head.

  He looked around, startled, saying, “What the hell—” and then the door in front of him opened.

  And Engall smiled at him from the other side.

  Chandler’s chest tightened, and he found it really hard to breathe for a moment. “Engall?” he said softly, and Engall nodded.

  “Why didn’t you want to come to my party?”

  Engall blushed. “Because I’d rather talk to you when we’re alone.”

  And for a moment, Chandler couldn’t breathe for a whole other reason. “Talk?” he squeaked. “You want to talk?”

  “Well….” Engall’s ears turned red, and Chandler couldn’t help it, he reached out and stroked that purpling ear, and Engall turned away. “Talking would be nice,” he finished in a small voice.

  Chandler found his smile coming all the way up from his toes. “Engall Carpenter, you are the most beautiful boy I’ve ever known, and I really want to kiss you, if you’d let me.”

  Engall looked at him with bright eyes. “I’m dying for you to kiss me.”

  Chandler raised his head then, because Engall was much taller than he was, and touched lips with him, right there in his doorway, and Engall opened his mouth and let him in.

  Oh, he tasted so good. Not furtive and not sneaky, and not flavored with beer. Just Engall, generous and laughing, and Chandler needed more of him. He pressed the kiss forward, putting his hands on Engall’s shoulders and pushing. Engall backed up and let him in, closing the door behind them.

  The kiss went on and on, and ended up with Engall lying on his back on the couch, with Chandler wriggling around on top of him. They both were aroused and erect and grinding against each other through their clothes.

  “Chandler!” Engall gasped. “Don’t you think… oh God….” Because Chandler had noticed that his mouth was swollen and chafed and even more kissable, so he kissed him some more.

  “What?” Chandler breathed when he pulled back up. Engall had somehow managed to slide his hands up under Chandler’s shirt and was rubbing the soft skin of his tummy with open palms. It made it hard to concentrate.

  “Don’t you think this would be better in bed?”

  Chandler was busy rucking up Engall’s shirt and kissing his chest. It was a nice chest, stringy and narrow, and not very defined, but still, it was wonderful to touch and it had a little patch of cinnamon-colored hair between the pecs and the nipples were a dark peach color. “Sure,” he mumbled. “Bed. Bed would be great.” And then he had to take one of those nipples in his mouth. Engall tilted back his head and groaned and bucked his groin up against Chandler’s as Chandler straddled him on the couch.

  It was about then, as Chandler was suckling on his nipple, that he realized Engall didn’t have any underwear on under his sweats.

  His aching cock almost exploded right there.

  “Bed,” Engall gasped, and Chandler agreed with him.

  “Bed,” he muttered, pulling down the plain gray sweats and moaning softly when he saw Engall’s erection, long and slender, like Engall himself, with a big knobby head and a shiny slick of precome coating.

  “Yeah,” Engall squeaked. “Bed would be… oh geez… Chandler….”

  And Chandler tasted it, sucked it into the back of his throat, as far as he could go, and then clumsily stroked from the bottom up. He hadn’t done this a lot, and it really was his big ticket act as far as experience went, but… but it was Engall, and Engall was moaning and writhing, and Chandler wanted to make him shudder and moan and cling and beg and belong just so badly. He wanted Engall… all of him….

  Engall’s hands were knotting in his hair, and Chandler let them position him, pushing, pulling, not expertly or even determinedly, but passionately, wanting, wanting badly.

  “God… Chandler… Chand… oh geez… yes… damn… yes yes yes yes yes yes… coming!”

  It was probably meant as a warning but it didn’t stop Chandler at all. He just kept sucking, rolling that thing on his palate, playing with his tongue, and in no time at all, Engall was convulsing, pulling his knees on either side of Chandler’s head and groaning loudly, unashamedly on the living room couch as he spurted, hot and salty, down Chandler’s throat.

  His tremors stopped, and Chandler pulled up alongside him, planting sloppy, come-y kisses on his jaw, his lips, his square chin, and his wide, pitcher ears. Engall had a little bit of scraggly stubble where he hadn’t quite shaved right, and Chandler liked that. It was imperfect and lovely, like Engall himself.

  Engall turned his head into Chandler’s kiss and pillaged his mouth, sucking on his tongue, tasting himself without inhibition, and Chandler whimpered. He was still hard, but he’d spilled a little when Engall came, so it wasn’t quite urgent—but it was getting there fast.

  “I had no idea,” Engall murmured when they came up from the kiss.

  “None?” Chandler asked, a little hurt. “I looked for you every day at class. I probably would have dropped out if I hadn’t wanted to see you so bad.”

  Engall smiled softly. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I think I came out to my parents today just so I could look myself in the mirror and say that I wanted you.”

  Chandler’s throat tightened. “When I didn’t see you tonight, it felt like my world had ended. I knew… I knew I loved you, but tonight… God, Engall. I saw Cristina walk in by herself and I almost cried.”

  Engall blushed. It was easy to spot on his fair skin, especially because it made his cheeks blotchy. “Well, I kept thinking I should go, I really did, but something kept telling me to stay in. I really did want to see you, you know.”

  Chandler shook his head. “It’s a good thing you didn’t go out. It’s crazy out there tonight.” Then he shook his head and felt the blood pulsing in his cock again. He ground up against Engall a little desperat
ely. “But dammit, I don’t have any condoms and….” His face heated. “You know,” he whispered, “there were some other things I wanted to do.”

  Engall grinned at him. “Let’s start with some reciprocation first,” he said. “And then we have the whole weekend to get started on this.”

  Chandler brightened. “The whole weekend?”

  “To get started.”

  “To get started. You mean that?”

  Engall nodded seriously even while he shoved his free hand, the one not wrapped around Chandler’s shoulders, down the front of Chandler’s jeans. Chandler gasped and started thrusting into his palm, his little spurt of precome making the way slick and hot.

  “I kept thinking I wasn’t good enough for you,” Engall confessed breathlessly, and Chandler groaned when he was going to protest, because Engall was better than he deserved. “Now that I think we’re good for each other, I’m not going to lose any time.”

  Chandler moaned into his shoulder, his hips jerking all on their own, and as he searched for words, any words, his groin built up to an explosion all over his body. He kept thrusting, words gone, until he came, whimpering into Engall’s chest.

  Engall pulled his hand out then, covered in white, and began to lick experimentally, making Chandler giggle.

  “We’ve got time,” Chandler managed, taking Engall’s hand and wiping it on Engall’s own T-shirt. “Now that we’re going in the right direction, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Engall clasped their hands together and kissed him, long and hard, and came back smiling.

  “Now can we go use the bed?”

  “Yeah,” Chandler said, then he stood up and sighed. “But condoms….”

  “Yeah,” Engall said, and Chandler laughed a little at the puzzlement on his face. “I have some. I stopped and got them on my way home from work this afternoon. I have no idea why.”

  DAGIEL knew the signs of an angel about to fall. He’d worked with Shepherd and Jefischa, two of heaven’s most famous fallen angels, and he’d seen them together near the end. Their faces and bodies had gone from perfect and idealized to actual, real, physical forms. Before Jefischa had fallen, Dagiel had been able to count the hairs on his head and the freckles on his cheeks. It was more than just the solid, flesh-and-blood physicality that meant the two angels had been ready to sojourn on Earth together, though. It had been something else, something less tangible. It was just, Dagiel thought with a little bit of pride, that they’d looked at each other like Engall and Chandler were looking at each other, with wonder and joy and a sort of glowing splendor pouring out of their rapidly humanizing bodies.

  Dagiel knew that he was looking at Hamon like that now. Hamon was standing there, his arm happily and warmly draped around Dagiel’s shoulders as they looked at the humans making love below them.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Hamon asked, oblivious to Dagiel’s hungry eyes on his face.

  “Yes,” Dagiel said helplessly. “They’re lovely.”

  “I love how they can look at each other’s imperfections and see the divine,” Hamon said curiously, and Dagiel nodded. Hamon’s eyes had creases in corners of them these days, like a human in his late thirties. He also had wrinkles around his neck, and a few black/gray hairs in golden mane. Hamon was a much older angel than Dagiel.

  “I do too,” Dagiel said roughly, and Hamon looked at him and smiled.

  “Dagiel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your robe is all askew again.”

  Dagiel flushed and moved his hands to fix it. He found Hamon’s hands there instead. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m not really good enough to be with you, you know that, right? I got that whole mission wrong, from first to last. I assumed Engall was supposed to be at the party. It never occurred to me that Chandler was supposed to come to him.”

  Hamon’s smile was always kind. “Well, Chandler wasn’t thinking that maybe Engall needed the encouragement. Sometimes, the person with all the power needs to make the first move. But I think you did okay in the end,” he finished reassuringly.

  “But you’re going to fall,” Dagiel said mournfully. “You’re going to fall, and I won’t be worthy to fall with you and….”

  “Dagiel?” Hamon said gently. “Were you watching the two of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you learn from Engall’s transformation?”

  Dagiel smiled a little. “I learned that we’re as beautiful as we believe ourselves to be. And that if our beloved thinks we’re beautiful, then that’s the best mirror we could have.” He looked up into Hamon’s warm brown eyes. Hamon was the most beautiful soul in the heavens. When he fell, his would be the most beautiful soul on the Earth.

  “Do you know why it was important that Engall changed his major?” Hamon asked softly, and Dagiel shook his head.

  “Because those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it,” Hamon told him, touching his nose gently with a battered, scarred, human finger. “Do you understand your history now, Dagiel?”

  Dagiel nodded and found a smile welling up from his wiggling, very human toes. “I understand that you find me beautiful.”

  Hamon closed his eyes. “I thought you’d never learn,” he whispered, and he bent his head to take Dagiel’s mouth in their first kiss, their first step to fall, like Chandler and Engall, as lovers toward Earth.

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  About the Author

  AMY LANE is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while commuting, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/ karate/oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate, Mack, to keep her tethered to reality—which he does while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She’s been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change.

  Visit Amy’s website at http://www.greenshill.com. You can e-mail her at [email protected].

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  Copyright

  Do-over ©Copyright Amy Lane, 2012

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  4760 Preston Road

  Suite 244-149

  Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Catt Ford

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760 Preston Road, Suite

  244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  Released in the United States of America

  June 2012

  eBook Edition

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-627-3

 

 

  Amy Lane, Do-over

 

 

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