Chapter 8

Iwhipped my head up, giving him an alarmed look. “What do you want to know?”

“Earlier,” he purred, standing much too close, still holding my hand, his thumb stroking over the back of it, “when I said you’d have to make it up to me, you were thinking of something. Something that made your face blush scarlet. What was it?”

I involuntarily twitched. Another lie wanted to climb to the tip of my tongue, embarrassment heating my chest and face. Because while I’d seen—felt—us explore each other in all kinds of sensual ways, it was one thing to know that it would happen, but a completely different matter to speak about it.

Out loud.

In front of him.

While he looked at me like I was a snack.

My heart drummed with such force that I was sure he heard it. It was most certainly loud enough to fill my head.

I opened my mouth.

“Remember,” he said softly, “that you swore to be honest.”

I closed my mouth with an audible click and swallowed. The coercion of the magic infusing the agreement I’d made built inside me, filling my cells with a nearly painful buzzing.

Licking my lips, I lowered my gaze to his throat, anywhere but his eyes, the connection far too intimate. God damn it, even his throat was sexy, all those muscles and sinews, light stubble on his bronze skin that I wanted to feel rasping against my mouth.

“I was thinking of,” I began, my voice breathy, “making it up to you by…” I broke off, squirming on the spot.

“Don’t be shy.”

Inhaling deeply, I squeezed my eyes shut, then gathered my nerves and plowed forward. “By sitting on your face.”

Silence.

Weightysilence.

I opened just one eye to peer up at him, cringing on the inside.

His nostrils flared as he stared at me with such intensity that it rattled me to my core. Something almost seemed to move under the surface of his face…or were those tiny cracks appearing in his skin? With fire underneath? His power raised the temperature around us to a boiling point.

“Sitting on my face,” he said, his voice rougher than I’d ever heard from him.

“Among other things,” I whispered.

He placed his free hand on the wall next to my head, effectively half caging me in. “What other things?”

His energy brushed against my senses with unmistakably erotic intent. A soft gasp escaped me. It was like a switch had been flipped in him. Before, he’d been mostly businesslike, if a bit flirtatious, his power held in check with only a hint slipping free here and there that indicated the ferocity at its core, but now it seemed sprung from its leash, its entire staggering force channeled into unapologetically carnal design.

“What other things?” he repeated, his voice now hitting a deep note that made my insides quiver.

“Taking you in my mouth.” Thump, thump, went my heart. “Making you come all over me.”

He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a choked-back groan.

“Having you tease me until I beg you to let me come,” I whispered into the heated space between us. “Until you bend me over and take me hard while pulling my hair.”

His wings shook, his power ramped up to scorching hot. “You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.”

“I have an overactive imagination.”

His energy tasted lush, heavy, wrapping around my senses. He let go of my hand in favor of touching my face—cupping my cheek and stroking his thumb oh-so-softly over my lower lip. When he spoke, his voice was an intimate murmur. “So that’s what you want to do?”

“I just told you.”

“I need you to tell me again.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “That’s what I want to do. With you.”

My hands trembled. I’d never been this bold before, this brazen, admitting to blatantly lurid fantasies. The reassurance from my visions, though, mixed with the coercion from the deal we’d struck and the obvious signs of interest in him let me move past old inhibitions.

“But,” I blurted out on a sudden thought, laying my hands on his chest, “just so you know, I…” Grimacing, I finished the sentence in a whisper. “I haven’t exactly done any of that before.”

I’d just realized that I’d sounded a bit too confident when listing the things I’d envisioned doing with him, considering my entire knowledge of these matters came from the often hazy memories of my dreams or the romance novels I’d read. Going by the way I’d spoken, he probably now thought he was about to tangle with an experienced partner, when in reality, my experience couldn’t be more lacking.

The sway of his power in the air paused, a breath held in suspension. Those storm-ravaged eyes of his flicked quickly between mine as his fingers infinitesimally twitched against my cheek.

“You haven’t had a lover?” he asked after a moment of tense silence. There was an undercurrent in his voice that I couldn’t place.

I softly shook my head, my stomach drawing tight.

“So no one has ever caught your eye?” He raised a brow, his tone now holding a flirtatious note. “I figured males must have been lining up to be with you.”

I blushed at the compliment, warmth spreading in my chest. “No, not really… I’ve never been drawn to anyone, and you’re kind of the first to show interest.” I laughed self-consciously. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit awkward.”

The way he looked at me then made butterflies erupt in my belly. “No,” he said, his voice completely earnest. “I haven’t.”

A knot inside me I hadn’t been aware of loosened. “So, you don’t mind?” I asked quietly. “That I don’t know how to…”

“Sit on my face? It really is self-explanatory.” His grin stirred those butterflies up again.

I gave him a feigned slap on his chest.

“No,” he said in a more serious tone after a moment, sliding his hand from my cheek to the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair. “But it changes things.”

“How?” My pulse sped up again.

His slow smile was dazzling. “Now I know to take my time.”

He tightened his hold on the back of my neck, subtly angling my head upward. Gradually, he leaned closer, eliminating the inches left between his mouth and mine one quickened breath at a time.

Until I felt the warmth of his lips on my own, the touch like an unspoken claim, like a seal of my fate.

And I melted.

All the tension, all the tightness held in corners of myself I hadn’t been conscious of, simply fled, washed away by a caress that felt like a benediction. So close to him, I breathed in his scent, making me press even closer, then slid my hands up his chest and over the sides of his neck until my fingers brushed his hair.

It was as silky as I’d thought—as I “remembered” from my dreams.

He licked at my lips, and I parted them on a sigh, following his unspoken demand to open up for him. When his tongue touched mine, pleasure arced down from that point of contact, electrifying, alluring, making me crave more. My nipples hardened against my tunic and the leather armor covering it, arousal slicking my core.

Lick by lick, touch by touch, he took the kiss from a gentle beginning to a more forceful advance, pulling me along, immersing me deeper into the experience. Our breaths tangled as we fell into a give-and-take, a sensual dance where he clearly led, completely in charge and showing me just how to move with him. It felt like a piece was falling into place, like I’d always known this, a forgotten familiarity just now rediscovered.

Desire coiled in me, building to a rush of mounting urgency through my blood. God, I wanted him. His touch, his heat, his scent, his nearness. I wanted to drink him in, fill my senses with him so I’d forever see the world tinged in the experience of his essence.

He withdrew just a little, his words murmured intimately against my lips. “I’ve been waiting to do this for so long.”

My breath was a rush of startled amusement. “We met only yesterday.”

His power tightened the air around us, a note of pain in his energy. “Feels longer.”

I didn’t dispute his claim, because I shared the sentiment. In my case, it really seemed like I’d known him for years, courtesy of the dreams I’d had where he’d starred in a leading role. I didn’t know whether he’d had similar premonitions, or maybe just a vague feeling of knowing me because I’d always been meant to step into his life one day and he’d sensed it somehow, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care.

Not when this, here, our shared breaths and the touch of him, felt like the first thing in my life that was truly right.

“Kiss me again,” I whispered and pulled at the nape of his neck to tug him back to me.

He complied, claiming my mouth once more with a passion I felt heating my every cell, as if he tried to part with a piece of his soul and give it to me. As if driven to do so with an urgency that bordered on despair.

As if he’d truly waited years to do this.

His hand settled on my waist, squeezing once before moving down over my hip and to my leg. Grasping the back of my thigh, he nudged me to lift my leg and swiftly hooked it around his hip when I obliged.

The move opened me to him, and while we were both still fully clothed, it made my breath hitch and arousal curl between my legs. Still kissing me, he pushed his hips forward and ground against me, his hardness the most delicious counterpoint to the slick softness of my core. The pressure against the center of my throbbing need sent pleasure zinging out through my body, and I gasped into his kiss.

His lips trailed down from my mouth, over my jaw, and to the spot where my neck met my shoulder. I shivered against him, pleasant goosebumps spreading out from the kisses against my neck and throat. My nipples were so hard, so sensitive, that even the touch of my clothing seemed too much, not enough, almost abrasive in its lack of sensual intent.

A tingle coursed over my arms, shoulders, and torso, and then I sucked in a stunned breath at the cool kiss of air where my tunic and armor had covered my skin just seconds earlier. I glanced down at my body and did a double take—I was naked from the waist up.

A soft thud drew my attention to the side, where Aziel had just casually dropped my tunic and armor.

I yanked my gaze back to his face. “Did you just summon my clothes off my body?”

He looked positively roguish, the sly smile upon his mouth completely unrepentant. “Not all of them.” He tugged at the waistband of my pants.

“I didn’t even know we could do that!”

Narrowing my eyes, I held one hand out to the side and focused on calling his armor to me. Nothing happened. His clothes stayed disappointingly on his body.

He grasped my hand and pressed it to the wall next to my head, then leaned in and nipped at my lower lip. “I’m not part of this territory, love. You won’t be able to summon items that belong to me.”

“Well, I’m not part of your territory either, so how did you just?—”

“My mighty seraph powers,” he purred against my lips.

I frowned. “But Naamah is a seraph, too, and she can’t summon things that belong to others. How?—”

My question ended in a moan as Aziel dipped his head and swirled his tongue around one of my nipples and then sucked on it. All thoughts and further inquiries fled my mind at the sinfully pleasurable thing he was doing and the flood of sensation it shot through my body. He kneaded my other breast with his free hand, tweaking my nipple, causing even more arousal to pool between my legs. The way he kept grinding the hard length of his erection against the very spot that was aching so sweetly made me gasp for air.

Oh, God, I was going to come undone, and he hadn’t even taken off my pants yet.

One more hard push against my core, and stars exploded behind my eyes. A tidal wave of pleasure ravaged through me, my head falling back against the wall as a strangled moan escaped me. He continued to rock against me, encouraging my climax to ebb and flow in increasingly smaller tremors of aftershocks.

My wings trembled, still smooshed between my back and the wall, and I magicked them away.

“No.” A rough demand, his eyes glowing as he came up from where he’d lavished his attention on my breasts. “Keep them out,” he added in a gentler tone.

I took a shaky breath and leaned into him to make more room behind my back again, then brought my wings forth once more.

Holding me to him with one arm slung around my waist, he lifted his other hand and reached behind me. His fingers brushed against the upper arch of my wing, and the sensation almost made my knees buckle. Eyes alight and focused on my face, he closed his hand around the arch—and squeezed.

“Oh, my fucking God!” I cried out, spasming under the influence of a new orgasm triggered by the explicitly erotic effect of the touch on my wing.

Holy shit.

Holy.

Shit.

How had no one ever mentioned that our wings were another erogenous zone?

His hand on my chin brought my attention back to him. He angled my face so I met his gaze, his expression somewhere between harsh and smug.

“When I am the one making you come,” he murmured, “you’d better make sure it’s my name you call out.”

I blinked at him, my mind still kind of hazy from the onslaught of pleasure. “I’ll try to remember that.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I had the impression he warred with the decision to say something, but then he simply stroked his thumb over my lips and leaned in to kiss me. When he withdrew, his eyes held a hint of sadness that I couldn’t explain.

“Do try,” he said quietly. Stepping back, he handed me my tunic and armor that he’d summoned from the floor. “Time is up for today.”

I frowned as I took them from him. “But…what about you?” I pointedly looked at the prominent bulge in his pants. “Don’t you want to—I mean, I could?—”

“Not today.” His smile was warm and just a little bit wicked. “This was for you.” Leaning in, he kissed me on the cheek and then murmured in my ear, “When I said I’d take my time, I meant it. You deserve not to be rushed.”

My heart stuttered, effervescent happiness bubbling through my veins.

He walked backward a few paces, one corner of his mouth tipping up. “See you tomorrow. I’ll have another lesson for you.”

His wink did all sorts of naughty things to my insides.