Angels' Flight (42 page)

“Yes.” She wanted to be alone with her barbarian.

The air was crisp against her skin, the night silent, but she didn’t make the mistake of thinking they were the solitary beings out here, not until Galen had flown them far beyond the Tower and toward the mountains in the distance, the world hushed around them. Landing in a small grassy clearing surrounded by trees majestic and huge, he slid her down his body with erotic deliberation, her gown whipping around to tangle with his legs as her body demanded she rub harder against him.

She went to pull away the strands of hair that had licked across her face, but he was already doing it, his skin rough against her own. Turning her face, she pressed her lips to his palm. “If you disappear like that again, I’ll beat you with your own leg.”

“You’re a terrifying woman, Jessamy.”

Shoving gently at him for the tease, she stood on tiptoe and spoke against his dangerous, passionate mouth. “You, Galen. I want you.
Only
you.” It didn’t matter if she hadn’t had a hundred different lovers, she knew what he was to her—
everything
. If she’d met him at the dawn of her existence, or at the end, it would not have changed that simple, immutable fact.

Moving both hands down to her hips, he aligned them chest to toe. “I should wait, I know.”

Her breath locked in her throat, her heart clenched.

“But I can’t.” A primal confession.

A single beat later and she was arching into his kiss once more, arms rock-hard with muscle clasping her close, her breasts crushed against his bare chest, his thighs set wide until she was nestled between.

Possessed.

Seduced.

Cherished.

If any part of her hadn’t already belonged to him, it became his when he cradled her face in his hands, and whispered, “Tell me to stop, Jessamy.” It was the plea of a man who had lost control.

It wrecked her that the weapons-master known for his calm under the most brutal pressure felt such hunger for her. “I don’t want you to stop.” Weaving her fingers into the liquid fire of his hair, she tugged his head back down.

When he said they should return to the Tower, so that she wouldn’t have to lie in the grass, she stroked her hand down the ridged lines of his chest and over the proud hardness that thrust against her abdomen. Only with Galen could she be this bold, this shameless. He made a low, rumbling sound that made her thighs clench, and then there was no more talk of delaying. Her clothing all but torn off her, she found herself spread out on the grass like some pagan sacrifice while he looked down at her as he undid the closure on his pants, a big man who should’ve scared her.

She parted her legs.
“Galen.”
Maybe she’d been sheltered, but she was a woman grown, a woman who had found her passionate lover.

His hand was gentle on her thigh when he came down over her, the touch of his blunt fingers even gentler as he worked her until she was whimpering and so needy it hurt. Chest heaving, he said, “Jessamy?”

Wrapping her legs around his waist, she rubbed the pulsing slickness between her thighs against him in answer. He gave a shuddering groan, and then he was pushing inside her. She’d heard the stories other women told, but nothing could describe this wild, beautiful sensation of being possessed and possessing at the same time. Crying out at the burning pain as her tissues struggled to accommodate him, she twined her arms around the man who loved her, and breathed in the dark musk of his scent, her wings shifting restlessly against the cool blades of grass.

A callused hand stroked her leg off his waist, spreading and bending it at the knee. The act opened her wider, Galen’s hardness settling deeper inside her. It tore a gasp out of her, but when he hesitated, she kissed and caressed him until he moved again. Shallow and slow, allowing her to get used to the weight and power of him.

“Jess.” Muscles strained taut, lips against her ear. “Is it too much?”

Yes.
Gloriously, wonderfully too much. “Don’t stop.” Arching up beneath him with a sumptuous roll of her hips, she welcomed his strokes. He continued to slide in and out so very slowly, but went deeper with each stroke, his mouth claiming hers at the same time—in a kiss that mimicked the carnal ecstasy of their mating.

The shock of her body coming apart without warning had her breaking the kiss, her head thrown back, the dark beauty of Galen’s wings spread in powerful silhouette above them. He rode her through the clenching pleasure, one big hand squeezing and shaping the slight but exquisitely sensitive mounds of her breasts as he laved kisses down the line of her throat, the other fisted in her hair to arch her neck for him.

Wrung out, her body feeling hotly, erotically used, she wove her fingers into flame red silk as the final opulent wave of pleasure rippled through her… and held him when he shuddered and spent himself inside her in hard pulses of liquid heat, calling her name at the end, whispering it over and over as his body continued to thrust into hers until he trembled, stilled, burying his face in the curve of her neck.

My man. Mine.

A
utumn bled into winter and then into the very heart of
snow and ice. As the days shortened and darkened, Jessamy spent her nights tangled in Galen’s arms when he wasn’t on watch or leading a night-training exercise, and reading into the dawn hours when he was. It was a time of discovery and play and joy, but for the quiet, creeping knowledge that her big barbarian was being very, very careful not to break her.

She hadn’t understood at first, too blinded by the splendor of what they did to each other to realize that loving wasn’t only a slow dance. But now that the naked edge of their hunger had been soothed, now that she’d spent more than one night exploring Galen’s beautiful body while he “suffered” for his lady’s pleasure, she could feel the taut tendons, the rigid muscles as he held himself back from expressing the violent force of his passion.

It hurt her that he never set himself free to take the intensity of pleasure he lavished on her, but she felt no anger. How could she be angry with a man who looked at her as Galen did? He might never say poetic words of love, but she knew what he felt for her in every fiber of her being, felt his devotion in every caress, every new wonder he searched out to show her… every secret he shared.

“My mother has written to me,” he’d said last night as they lay in bed.

Aware of the painful relationship he had with Tanae, she’d placed her hand over his heart and simply listened.

“She tells me to return, says Titus has agreed to give me command over half his forces. Orios will remain weapons-master, but I would be his lieutenant.”

Rising up on one elbow, she’d scowled. “Why would she offer you a lesser position than you have with Raphael?” Perhaps Raphael’s army was not yet as impressive as Titus’s, but it was
Galen’s
to train, to lead. Even Dmitri, Raphael’s second, bowed to Galen’s expertise when it came to their troops.

Galen’s smile had held a bleakness she’d never before seen in her warrior. “Because she knows I have ever striven to please her. As a child, I thought if I was good enough, strong enough, I could earn her love.”

Her smoldering anger at Tanae, having built over the seasons with every small truth Galen betrayed about his barren childhood, had ignited. “You have no need to please anyone, Galen. You are magnificent, and if she can’t see that, then she is a fool.”

A dawning light in the sea green, until it was translucent. “Magnificent?”

Caught by the vulnerability he showed no one else, she’d whispered her answer in a kiss. “Utterly.”

Now, having made her way to her favorite vantage point on the roof, she thought of how much that small conversation had told her about her barbarian. He might be brash and blunt on the surface, but there was a terrible wound on Galen’s heart, one that led him to take such exquisite care with her—as if he did not ever want to do anything that might drive her away now that she was his.

A single tear trickled down her cheek.

14

G
alen finished the drills early as the winter darkness
closed around them, the air clear of snow today, though a thickness of it covered the ground. Scowling at the whispers that passed from warrior to warrior about their weapons-master’s desire to get home, he nonetheless waved the grinning lot of them off without reprimand. Maybe he was getting soft, but he was happy in a way he’d never before been happy. It made him tolerant.

Winging his way to the balcony of the apartment he now shared with Jessamy, he found the rooms empty. Disappointed, he decided to head out to bathe. He’d just grabbed a change of clothes when Jessamy walked into the room. His heart stopped as it always did. Flowing into his arms, she kissed him with the wild joy of a woman who loved his touch. Such constant affection could make a man lose his head, come to believe that he was the magnificent creature he saw in her eyes.

“Are you going to bathe?” She nuzzled at him, her hands caressing his chest with delicate proprietariness over the top of the shirt he’d taken to wearing when the snows came. Jessamy worried otherwise.

“I’ll be back soon.” The river water was icy even for an angel, didn’t tempt him to linger.

Slow and wicked, Jessamy’s lips curved in a smile only Galen ever saw. “I’ll scrub your back.”

He should’ve told her to remain in the Tower, where she’d be warm and comfortable, but he needed her too much. Giving her the clothes to hold, he scooped her up and flew them not to the nearby river, but to a small pond at the foot of the mountains in the distance, where the water ran clear and sweet yet. It was a considerably longer flight, but it mattered little since he had Jessamy with him.

“Is anyone likely to disturb us?” she asked when they landed, spreading her wings out to stretch them, a tall, beautiful woman in an ankle-length gown the color and lightness of seafoam, the buttons that closed the wing slits at her shoulders made of square-cut crystals in a more vibrant shade of blue.

“No. We’re alone.” Unable to resist, he stroked the sensitive arches of her wings to her quiet shiver of pleasure. “This area is far out from the angelic patrols, and uninhabited. The mountains are as wild as they were at the start of time.”

Her smile held a sultry anticipation that made his cock jump. “Don’t you have to bathe?”

Laughing at the way she sat down on a nearby rock, like a great queen about to enjoy a private performance, her wings brushing the snow, he began to strip. He’d never been self-conscious about nudity, but seeing Jessamy’s delight in his body had made him an exhibitionist… but only with her. Bare to the skin—and blatant in his desire—he sucked in a breath and dived under the chill surface of the deep pond fed by mountain rains.

The icy cold was a shock, but nothing his body couldn’t handle. Rising to the surface, he blinked the water from his eyes to see Jessamy’s gown and undergarments pool at her feet, leaving her a long-limbed goddess, her flesh in perfect proportion to her fine frame. Her curves were slender, but very much apparent, her breasts taut mouthfuls he loved to taste and tease. His historian was very sensitive there.

Sitting down on the verge of the pond after dropping his discarded shirt on the snow, her legs hanging over the side and into the water, she shivered. “Come here.”

“As my lady wishes.” Her laugh, soft and intimate, wrapped around him as he floated to settle between her knees, spreading her thighs wider to her blush. He watched the progress of the wave of hot color as it pinkened her breasts, her nipples tight pouting points he had to taste.

“Oh.”
Her hand fisted in his hair.

Pleased, he used his thumb and forefinger to pluck the nipple of her neglected breast while drawing deep on the other with his mouth. She was so small, so perfect, that he could take her fully into his mouth—to suck and mark and lick. Releasing her with slow reluctance, he enjoyed the sight of her breast glistening from his loving, so rosy and beautiful. When she tugged on his hair, he smiled, licked out at her other breast.

By the time he stopped, the sweet musk of her was in his every breath. “Jess.” It came out raw.

“Yes.” She parted her thighs wider as he kissed his way across her navel and to the tart sweetness hidden by fine chestnut curls. He’d feasted on her before, loved the little sounds she made when she quickened on his tongue, but tonight, he found his control frayed to a ragged edge by the wild sensuality of her invitation. His strokes were rougher, his grip on her hips tighter.

Instead of shying, she lifted toward him.

He was a man. A man who craved her. It had the effect of snapping the leash. Licking, sucking, and even nipping with his teeth, he pushed her to a hard, fast peak. She shuddered, the taste of her pleasure erotic on his tongue. Aware how sensitive she was after a climax, he backed off to suckle a hot, wet kiss on the inside of her thigh. “The water’s not that cold,” he cajoled, wanting her in with him so he could push his cock—rock-hard in spite of the chill—into the molten tightness of her core.

Her eyes glinted. “Liar.” Hands massaging his shoulders, she leaned forward with wings spread to claim his mouth, her sexuality unashamed and intoxicating. “I want something else.”

Intrigued, he pushed up with his arms on either side of her, nuzzling and kissing the graceful line of her neck. “Anything.”

Fingers weaving into his hair as he slid back down, she lifted her eyes to the night sky, lit only by the delicate sliver of a sickle moon and the ice-cold fire of innumerable stars. “I want to dance, Galen.”

His hands clenched on her thighs.
“Jess.”

Jessamy kissed him again, soft and lush and seductive. “I never thought, never dared dream I’d have that, but you promised me, Galen.” Teeth on his lower lip, the soothing warmth of her tongue, heated suckling. “You said you’d fly me wherever I wanted to go.”

Those tiny kisses driving him a step closer to insanity, he moved his hands up to close over her breasts, forcing himself not to be too rough with her. If he hurt Jessamy, he’d cut off his own hands, cauterize the wounds with heated metal so they wouldn’t heal for a season. Then he’d do it over again.