The cracked window also let in the sound of thumping bass. One of our neighbors was having a party.

Gabriel led me to the bed and I sat perched on the edge, so tense I was ready to take off. As the moment drew nearer and nearer I felt panic rising again. It was definitely easier to fight monsters.

He knelt behind me and pulled the towel from my hair. The curly mess of it fell over my shoulder and to the middle of my back.

“My hair is too long,” I mumbled, just to have something to say.

“I like it just as it is,” Gabriel said softly, stroking his fingers through the wet tangles and smoothing them out.

A moment later he began drawing my cheap drugstore brush through the strands. I wished suddenly that I was a vainer person, that I colored away the rapidly multiplying gray hairs or that I had bought a nicer brush. Plastic bristles seemed like they were not nearly good enough for such a momentous occasion.

Some of the tension drifted away as Gabriel pulled the brush through my hair with long, sure strokes. Music drifted in through the window, an upbeat dance song about falling in love like a teenager.

“I was never a teenager like that,” I said.

“Like what?” Gabriel asked.

“Like in the song. My mother died when I was so young. You’d think my life would have been one endless party with no parents leaning over my shoulder, but it wasn’t.”

“What was it like?”

“Scary, mostly. I became an Agent when my mom died. I was trying to feed myself and not lose the house. That’s not the kind of information you can share with a potential boyfriend, or even a friend. I had to keep so much of my life a secret that I was never able to do normal teenage things, like go to the mall or sneak into R-rated movies or get trashed at parties. I never went on a date, never went to the prom. I never made out in the front seat of a car or got in a fight with my mom over a too-short skirt. One day I was a relatively normal kid and the next day I was responsible for the souls of the dead.”

“We are not so different. I did not have a ‘normal’ childhood, either,” Gabriel said.

I twisted to look at him and he stopped brushing. “What was it like, growing up with Azazel?”

Gabriel’s eyes grew distant. “Difficult. There was never a time when I was not reminded of my status. Many of the Grigori disagreed with Lord Azazel’s decision to raise me. I was often forced to battle creatures from other courts to prove my worth.”

“What, like gladiatorial combat?”

Gabriel nodded.

“How old were you?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Eight, I believe, on the first occasion. It has been many years. I cannot remember exactly.”

Eight. He’d been made to fight for his life when I was riding my bike up and down the street and reading Judy Blume books. I guess my childhood wasn’t so bad after all.

“How old are you, Gabriel?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I’d never thought to ask this question before.

He smiled briefly. “I am not certain it is wise to answer that question.”

“Why not?”

“I believe you are already feeling self-conscious and the answer will make you more so.”

“Don’t you think your wife ought to know the answer?”

He sighed. “One thousand and twenty.”

The light in the room flickered, or it just might have been black spots flickering before my eyes.

“One…thousand. With three zeros.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I do not wish for you to, as you say, make a big deal out of this.”

I laughed. “Right, why would it be a big deal that you’re nine hundred and eighty-eight years older than me?”

“Age does not matter,” Gabriel said, his fingers under my chin. “Like you, I am not…experienced.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I’d been so wrapped up in my own worries that I’d forgotten that Gabriel had been forbidden from birth to have sex with anyone. The Grigori would not risk another child of the nephilim’s line being born. And I’d thought I was the last virgin over the age of thirty in the U.S.

“So, I guess neither of us really knows what we’re doing, huh?”

“Madeline,” Gabriel said, and this time there was an undercurrent of implication when he said my name. “I believe we can figure out what to do.”

“Gabriel,” I said, with one last vestige of panic clinging to my voice. “The last time I was on a bed with a guy he tried to rape me.”

He stroked his fingers over my cheek, and I closed my eyes. There was so much gentleness in him. I was amazed that Azazel had never been able to beat it out of him.

“I will never harm you,” he said, and he kissed me again.

He leaned forward, wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me backward on top of him. He was deliciously hot, and in this position all of our relevant parts were rubbing in all the right places.

But he didn’t pull my robe off my shoulders, or attempt to remove his own pants. He just kept kissing me, until I grew soft and warm and pliant, until my breath was short and my hands were roaming.

Only then did he untie the already loosened belt of my bathrobe and toss it away. Only then did his hands go everywhere that ached for his touch, and his mouth followed.

I unbuttoned his pants, slid my fingers inside, heard him gasp. I was suddenly aware of a power I had never really comprehended before—my power as a woman, the power I had to make a strong man weak—and I smiled.