Chapter 12

Zoe

Over the next few days,I kept meeting Aziel after my work shifts were done, the connection between us growing with every encounter. I hadn’t known it was possible to be so utterly infatuated with someone, to have my heart jump out of my chest at the sight of him, to hang on every word he said, to anticipate falling into his arms with such ardor that it robbed me of focus for anything else, and to dread having to leave him again when our time was up.

And still, even with the inevitable goodbye I had to say every day before returning home, those days were the happiest of my life because the time we did spend together more than made up for the pain of parting.

He’d started bringing me thoughtful gifts, like new magazines from Earth, books, and all sorts of food goodies—he’d introduced me to carrot cake, which had become an instant favorite for me—and he’d even procured a TV and a Blu-ray player, powered by a large battery, along with several movies. We’d watched a few already, snuggled up on his cushion, and each time, we’d ended up not even paying attention to the screen anymore because other things had become much more interesting yet again.

Of course, we did train, even if just enough not to run afoul of his paying back the favor, but mostly, we fell over and into each other more times than I could count. I’d had no idea how much of a sexual creature had lain dormant inside me, even with those explicit dreams I’d had, until he’d brought it forth and nurtured it to monstrous proportions. I couldn’t get enough of him, of his touch, his taste, of feeling the heat of his body wrapped around mine, of the exquisite pleasure he gave me.

He’d also added a vibrator to our bed play, using it quite creatively to drive me to even greater heights of ecstasy.

We’d pretty much explored all there was to explore short of actually sleeping together, which was something he stubbornly refused to do, much to my chagrin. He’d said it was about wanting me to be more than ready for it, and giving me time, and not wanting to rush things. I was about ready to rush my fist down his throat if he didn’t go there soon. I’d already asked him, had given him crystal-clear signs that I wanted this…and still he held back.

Besides my own mounting frustration over not taking that ultimate step of being together, I couldn’t help feeling some tension from him as well. Especially over the past two to three days, I’d had the sense that something was brewing in him. It had almost felt like he, too, was frustrated somehow. I wondered if it had to do with us not sleeping together, but it didn’t make sense. He was the one who insisted on dragging it out, so if that was what caused the tension in him, he should just go ahead and fuck me already! I wanted it!

Maybe I’d confront him about it today. In general, we were good at talking, so there was no reason we should tiptoe around this issue.

I was lying draped over his chest once more, my naked body cooling down from the most recent pleasure sesh, when he said, “I’ve got something for you.”

I grinned. “Again? I mean, not that I’m complaining, but you are kind of insatiable.”

His chuckle warmed my heart. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“I tried,” I said with a sigh. “But it seems you can take the mind out of the gutter, but not the gutter out of the mind.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, the gesture belied by the fact that he was silently laughing underneath his palm.

“Before you get any other wayward ideas”—he produced a small object—“here.”

I lifted up onto my elbow beside him and blinked at the piece of jewelry he held out to me. “Are you—is that—are you giving me a ring?”

“No, I was thinking of using this diamond to cut through the glass of the Louvre and steal the Mona Lisa,” he countered in all earnestness. Then he sent me a look. “Yes, I’m giving you a ring.”

I stared at the incredibly beautiful piece, stunned speechless for a moment. The band was made of some silver metal, splitting into intricately woven tendrils that cradled a large jewel in the middle. Gorgeously cut, the gem seemed to be entirely black but, on closer inspection, harbored a riot of colors in its depths, as if the aurora borealis had splintered into the hues of the rainbow and had been caught inside this obsidian jewel.

The sight of it caused a rush of recognition, some deep knowing of having seen this before…likely in one of my visions. I couldn’t recall the context of the dream in which it had to have appeared, but I knew this ring.

The telltale headache following one of my visions coming true spread out from my temples with spindly fingers of pain.

Aziel grasped my hand and pushed the ring onto my finger, and my breath hitched.

“Don’t humans usually give these for proposals and weddings?” I whispered.

“That’s right.”

The devotion in his gaze as he regarded me made my heart ache. So much so that I couldn’t stand the gravity of the moment, of these big emotions that were welling up inside me.

“You know,” I said, forcing a casual lightness to my voice, “there really is no need to give me jewelry to butter me up for sleeping with you. I’m already buttered up. Head to toe dipped in delicious, golden, greasy?—”

His hand on my mouth effectively shut me up. His eyes lit by silver flashes, he pinned me with a look so intense it touched my soul. “I love you.”

He removed his hand from my mouth in favor of cupping my cheek, and I sucked in a breath, my eyes stinging, my chest full of bubbly warmth.

“You light up my life,” he went on, and the solemn vow in his voice struck a chord deep inside me. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a tragically long time. When I’m around you, I’m the best version of myself I’ve ever been. You make me better.”

I closed my eyes against the surge of knowing, of recognition, of experiencing yet another piece of my visions coming true. His words rang with a truth taken from some deep place inside me, from where those dreams must have sprung, supplying me with snippets of the future. As with the ring, I couldn’t remember the entire dream surrounding this one detail, the rest of the vision remaining shrouded in mist, but I knew with utmost certainty that I’d heard Mysterious Stranger speak these words to me in a dream.

And right on cue, my head throbbed with a renewed headache, the painful price I apparently had to pay for channeling the future.

“Z—” Aziel began, only to break off as if he’d bitten his tongue.

When I opened my eyes, it was to find him staring at me with his features drawn tight, his eyes glowing in the dim light of the cave.

“Talk to me,” he said gently.

And with a shuddering breath, I laid my heart bare for him, too.

“I love you,” I whispered, voicing that heady, intimidating, wonderful feeling that had been growing in me for a while…for far longer, maybe, than this past week. I suspected I’d loved him as the stranger appearing in my dreams for years already, each vision building the certainty I’d needed to open my heart to him.

Making it less scary to admit to this deep emotion.

His breath left him on a rough exhale, and he closed his eyes for a moment. His power vibrated in the air, and despite the obvious relief on his face, there was a markedly darker note to his energy.

Opening his eyes again, he leaned in and caught my mouth in a kiss that was equal parts tender and passionate, confirming his claim and speaking to the love he’d confessed. My heart wide open, I melted into his caress, pouring everything I felt into the kiss.

Everything else fell away—the cave, the waterfall, the world outside, who I was without him, my responsibilities and obligations. It had always felt like we were in our own little dimension in here, isolated from the rest of Heaven, but now it all truly faded into insignificance. The only thing that mattered was him, us, this love wrapping me up in the kind of devotion and desire that let my soul glow.

The kiss turned more urgent, and my skin seemed to catch fire, a storm of flames rolling over and through me at his touch, at the feel of him. No matter how many times we’d been intimate already, I still burned for him. And I wanted more. I wanted all of him.

I couldn’t even describe this feeling of emptiness, that yearning need inside me, only that it had almost turned into a physical ache. I knew from my dreams what it did to me to feel him inside me, and I was ready to go ballistic for not getting it in reality.

Breaking the kiss to fully straddle him, I placed my hands on his chest and rubbed my core—still well lubricated from when he’d spoiled me with his oral skills earlier—right over his steely length. His eyes darkened, and his power gained an edge.

Digging my fingers into his pecs, I leaned forward, nipped at his mouth, and murmured, “I want you. I want this.” I demonstrated what I meant with another roll of my hips over his cock. “I need to feel you inside me.”

Threading his fingers through my hair, he looked at me with all the signs of pent-up lust and excruciating sensual hunger, yet he still didn’t act. “Chaya…”

I gritted my teeth. “I. Want. You. And I’m more than ready. What more do I need to do to prove that to you? Do you want me to spell it out to you in interpretive dance?”

The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Will you be naked?”

I playfully slapped his chest. “Do not make me do that. I’m shit at dancing. I’d look like a drunk flamingo.”

His low laugh took some of the edge off his power, softening the hardness of his features.

“Please,” I murmured, placing a light kiss on his lips. “Stop denying me this.”

He regarded me for a long moment, his fingers idly playing in my hair, his power stirring the air between us. Then, a slow, slow smile snuck onto his face, adding a roguish touch to the carnal hunger in his expression. “Fine.”

And before I could even make a celebratory sound, he was up on his feet, swinging me over his shoulder and carrying me to the back of the cave.

“Excuse you!” I exclaimed, bouncing lightly with his powerful strides. “What are you doing? The cushion is right there!” I flailed in the direction of the bedroll that we were leaving behind.

“I’ve got something better in mind.” He patted my bare ass, his fingers brushing against my soaked entrance for a second.

I jerked in his grasp, that minimal touch enough to make sensation pulse between my legs again.

He carried me into the tunnel off the main cave that I’d seen but never explored—what with having a stud of an angel to explore right in front of me—and eventually he turned into another cave.

The air was different here—hot and humid with steam curling around me—and even before Aziel set me down, I knew there had to be thermal springs nearby.

He let me glide down his body, his arm around my waist, his eyes intent on my face. “I thought you might appreciate this,” he murmured, then turned me around.

A landscape of pools stretched out before us, the water stunningly turquoise, tendrils of steam rising up from the surface. I sucked in a breath, unable to imagine what it would feel like to immerse myself in all that hot water.

But—

“I can’t swim,” I blurted.

Maybe I’d once known how to as a human, but I’d never had need of it as an angel, so I’d never learned. And it wasn’t that I’d risk drowning, per se, since not breathing wouldn’t kill me. But it wouldn’t be fun to splash around helplessly in the deep.

“It’s shallow,” he said, placing his chin on my shoulder, his chest pressing into my back. “Probably only up to here”—he drew a line across my breasts, his touch featherlight and yet causing my nipples to harden—“in the deepest parts. Other areas are even shallower.” He trailed his fingers down, grazing my pebbled nipples, over the lower curve of my breasts, to my belly…until he made little circles right above the thatch of dark curls covering my mound.

Tiny shocks of pleasure arced down, and I squirmed in his hold.

“Go on in.” He placed a kiss on my neck, gliding his hand around me to lightly squeeze my butt.

I’d only ever taken showers, had never experienced the luxury of sliding into a body of water, especially with the express intent of it not being for cleaning purposes.

This was for pleasure, and the mere thought of it felt decadent.

Taking a few steps forward, I threw a look over my shoulder at him, an excited smile on my face. He watched me with predatory focus, those storms in his eyes seemingly darker, his energy holding an agitated note that didn’t show on his face.

“This is not just a distraction, though, is it?” I asked him with a grin and a raised brow. “I mean, we are going to make love, right?”

His dark lashes lowered over his eyes, half obscuring that thundercloud gray. When he spoke, his voice was like the rasp of rough silk over my skin. “Yes.”

“Good.”

With a smile, I turned back to the pool, stepping up to the edge and dipping my toes into the water. It was a comfortable temperature, not too hot, but not lukewarm either. Perfect for a bath.

I sat on the edge and slipped my legs into the water, and a moment later, I glided fully into the pool, submerging my body up to my neck.

The sound I made at the sensation of the heat enveloping me like a relaxing, full-body hug bordered on erotic. “Oh, God. This is divine.”

Water splashed softly next to me, and when I turned, it was to see Aziel having entered the pool as well, making his way over to me. Lightning in his eyes, his power prickling over my senses, he gently grasped my chin in his hand and turned my face up for his kiss.

“I knew you’d like it,” he murmured against my lips.

I hummed and pressed my body against his, my soft curves fitting perfectly along the hardness of his physique. The ridge of his cock against my belly sent a shiver of sparks down to the apex of my thighs.

Placing one hand between my shoulder blades, the other on my ass, he lifted me up and leaned me back a little so that my breasts were above the surface, water sluicing down the curves. He dipped his head and followed the trail of the rivulets with his tongue, retracing the path of those drops, and came up again, circling one nipple, then the other.

My breathing turned choppy. Arousal churned in my core, each lick echoed in a flare of desire that quickly took over my system. My fingers speared through his hair, and I pulled his head closer, desperate for more. He closed his teeth over one nipple, biting just enough that a bolt of pleasure shot straight down to the pulsing need between my legs. I floated in the hot water, held only by his hands and my grip on him, lost to the sensation of his lips, tongue, and teeth wreaking havoc on my breasts.

It felt like I would melt right into the water if he ever let up, my body dissolving into liquid pleasure.

Just when I thought the ache of unfulfilled need became unbearable, his hand on my ass pulled me closer to him. On instinct, I slung my legs around him, and he brought me even closer, until the length of him pressed against my throbbing core—not entering me, but instead rubbing right over my clit.

He bit down on my nipple just as he ground me against him, and my orgasm rocked through me with explosive force. I wrapped my arms around his neck as I shuddered in his hold, riding out the waves of my climax by rolling my hips.

He caught my quickened breaths in a kiss, his voice like molten honey when he spoke against my lips. “Ready for more?”

“Fuck yes.”

He backed me into the smooth cave wall that rose directly out of the water, though my skin didn’t make contact with the stone—his arms cushioned me, one slung around my hips, the other behind my back, his hand cradling my head. With my arms around his neck, my legs around his hips, I held on to him as he lowered his head and caught my mouth again in a kiss that further heated all the places already sizzling with anticipatory lust, aching with need. I rolled my hips along his hard cock, increasing the throb of building pleasure inside me.

His fingers tightened in the strands of my hair, his power pressing against my senses.

“You’re mine.” A rough claim, whispered against my lips. “Now and forever.”

“Then take me.”

He moved his hips, letting his cock glide over my clit a few times, stirring my arousal to new heights again, until I was panting, the impact of another orgasm looming just a moment away. With a twist of his hips, he positioned himself lower, and the head of his cock pressed against my entrance.

His gaze caught and held mine as he pushed inside me, slowly, ever so slowly. Slick as I was, his size still stretched me to near-painful levels, a subtle, erotic burn that didn’t diminish the need to feel him fully. If anything, it made me want him more, my body recognizing the sensation as the overture to something far greater yet to come.

His power hovering on the edge of some dark abyss, he kept going until he was seated in me to the hilt. I gasped at the feeling—so full, tight in a way that was at once unfamiliar and yet felt like coming home.

His energy brushed over me, sensual and soothing at the same time, petting me into a loose kind of arousal.

“All right?” he asked, a rough note to his voice. His features were drawn tight, tension turning his body rock-hard.

“Yes,” I breathed. “I need you to move.”

I wanted what lay beyond this prelude, craved the depth of sensation promised by this small taste of the whole.

“Then hold on, love.”

He withdrew until he was almost out, and that singular move had me uttering a cry already, the feeling of his hard cock sliding against my sensitive tissue an unfamiliar friction—one that turned into an erotic stimulation as he pushed right back in. His power languidly flowed over my skin, dripping across my breasts like honey, hot and tantalizing. The teasing touch of his energy combined with the sensual intrusion of him moving inside me made me clench my inner muscles around him.

He paused and closed his eyes briefly, his jaw tight, his shoulders under my hands rigid. “You feel so fucking perfect,” he said after a moment, his voice husky and his energy a riot of restrained emotions.

“Same,” I whispered, tangling my fingers in the hair at his nape.

This felt like the culmination of a myriad of small steps that had led me here, like I’d been searching my whole life for the place I belonged, only to find it here, in his arms, in the most intimate embrace that connected us on a level far beyond the physical.

With the kind of patience that no doubt required masterful self-control, he moved again, thrusting at a measured pace, his cock gliding in and out. I became impossibly wetter, each ruthlessly controlled move inside me driving my arousal higher, causing my body to melt and tense up at the same time. I writhed against him, seeking more pressure, more friction, wanting to lose myself in the feel of him.

“Harder,” I breathed, my fingers grabbing his hair tight.

With a low growl, he bent his head and nipped at my throat, pulling out—only to slam back into me. A cry turned moan escaped me at the rough sensation, at the sheer force of his thrust. My intimate muscles fluttered around his cock, that building pleasure inside me close to reaching another tipping point again.

I urged him on with a roll of my hips, arching against him, and he responded by letting more of his power off its leash. Faster now, he pounded into me, the impact pushing me into his arms still shackled around my back, the water churning around us. Each thrust felt like a claim to my body, my soul, my heart, and I fell, fell, fell until every breath of mine was a whispered prayer to him, a confirmation of his possessive declaration—and a claim of my own.

He was mine, and I would take all he had to give and more.

He sought my mouth again, his kiss beyond hungry, the licks of his tongue as greedy and demanding as the thrusts with which he pinned me against the wall. I barely noticed how the crystals seemed to dim in the cave, shadows growing around us. The way he took me was all-consuming, like he wanted to brand himself into every last cell of my body, wanted to leave his mark upon my soul.

All I could do was cling to him, held in place as he pumped into me, as he gave me exactly what I’d asked him for. My pulse rolled like thunder through my blood, my core tightening, tightening… I couldn’t breathe, or maybe I’d forgotten how, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but feeling him inside me, feeling his heat, his power, the way I lost myself in him, and how he lost himself in me.

In all the times we’d been intimate, he’d never been like this—so wild, bordering on savage, unrestrained and primal. That tight control he’d held over himself most of the time had snapped, the tether with which he’d strangled his power laying in tatters. He was rough, possessive, demanding, and I shivered with delight at the storm he unleashed upon me.

I dug my fingers into his skin as that pressure inside me reached a boiling point, the nearing impact of an orgasm looming close like the approaching tidal wave of a tsunami. I knew that when it broke, it would drown me.

He ground himself against me, deliberately rubbing over my pulsing clit, and that wave crashed over me. Pleasure soaked my system, ecstasy rushing through me with such force that my vision went dark, and I could only feel, feel, feel.

And I felt so much.

Him, in every part of me, all around me, that bond between us, threads of fate woven in invisible ties, his power mingling with my own, pleasure beyond anything I’d ever known, and that glowing love filling all the hollow places inside me.

“Aziel,” I murmured, his name a blessing on my tongue.

Dimly, through the haze of my bliss, I noticed how he found his own release, his thrusts becoming slower. He stilled against me, his face buried in my neck, his chest heaving with his deep breaths. The force of his power in the air was near searing in its intensity, an unfamiliar note to it.

It almost seemed to burn against my skin.

I blinked, drew in a breath, and opened my mouth to say something, when I suddenly found myself stumbling into the water—because Aziel was gone.

I sucked in air, splashing wildly in my moment of disorientation until I’d gotten my bearings and stood, my feet touching the bottom of the pool. Heart thrumming fast, I glanced around, my eyes darting all over the cave, even checking the clear turquoise water to see if maybe he’d gone under the surface, to no avail.

“Aziel?”

No answer.

He wasn’t here.

He’d left.