Raphael’s response was to land behind her, his arms coming around her in a steely hold as he swiveled her to face him. Starving for the taste of him, she wrapped her arms around his neck, snapped her wings tight to her back and held on for the ride.
They rose through lingering traces of angel dust, each fine mote kicking her further into a kind of heat she wasn’t sure she could survive. Groaning, she pressed her mouth to the uncompromising angle of his jaw, licking at his skin, sucking and tasting as he flew them home. Against her belly, he was hard, deliciously tempting. She wanted to close her hand around that heavy heat, but had to satisfy herself with biting kisses along his jaw.
He didn’t stop her, but his body grew increasingly more taut, his muscles electric with strain by the time they landed on the balcony outside their bedroom. She felt him slide open the doors, shut them after they entered. And then the archangel lost control. She was being turned with a hard move that left no room for argument, the shirt ripped off her like so much mist.
A fragment of thought before his hands closed over her breasts from behind, his teeth sinking into the sensitive flesh of her neck. The scream of pleasure was torn out of her, a short, sharp burst. The hands curved so possessively around her breasts squeezed, sending another bolt of lightning straight through to the heat between her thighs, her body slick with welcome, with need.
Releasing the grip he had on her neck, Raphael sucked on the mark he’d made, his body a furnace that burned her from the inside out. When she twisted, trying to turn, he slipped one hand down to her abdomen, holding her in place with effortless strength, his other hand continuing to torment the sensitive flesh of her breasts, her nipples almost painfully aroused.
“Your mouth,” she whispered, her voice husky. “I need your mouth.”
Not yet.
She shivered at the implacability of that comment, the dark sexual tone of it. Raphael was not only out of control, he wasn’t going to allow her any either. She could have fought, but she’d hungered for him since the instant she woke from the coma. The archangel could have her any and every way he wanted.
Raising her arms, she went to twist them behind her and around his neck, but he was already nudging her forward, onto the bed. She flowed with the movement, ending up on her knees on the sheets. Raphael pressed his hand to her lower back. Understanding the silent message, she went down onto her hands, too.
It was a starkly submissive position. However, she was feeling anything but submissive. Using one hand to shift her hair to the side, she glanced back over her shoulder, wanting to tease him in the way a woman could tease a man in bed. “Oh God.”
The archangel was glowing. A visceral terror in her gut, born of eons-old instinct.
I can feel your fear, Elena.
Blowing out a breath, she sucked in another, the action shaky. “It’ll add spice to the proceedings.”
A slow blink, his eyes lingering over the sweep of her back as he unfolded his wings with a careless grace that left her mouth watering. Then, eyes hooded, he stroked one hand down the curve of her bottom. Spread your thighs.
She resisted.
A glance of savage, wild blue.
Smiling just enough to let him know she was teasing, she widened her stance the merest fraction. He responded by running a single finger across the seam of her pants, stroking right over the hottest, most hungry part of her.
“Raphael!”
You wanted to play.
Still as dark, still as full of sexual intent . . . but holding an undertone of sensual amusement. Shuddering under the intimacy of the caress, she blew out a breath. “Yeah, I did.” She went to flip over onto her back, but he read the tension in her muscles faster than she could move, holding her in place with a single hand on her hip.
“No fair,” she murmured, dropping her head. “I’m not as strong.”
Who said anything about playing fair?
She laughed, feeling as if her skin was stretching to accommodate the sexual energy within. “Are you planning to take off my pants anytime soon? I’m burning up.”
Another lushly intimate caress. “I can feel your dampness through your clothing.” His voice dropped, became impossibly more sensual as his fingers pushed upward. “I’ll lick you here.”
The stark statement of intent had fire burning across her cheeks.
“A blush?” A tug at the back of her pants, and suddenly, the material was gone, her skin bared to his gaze. “A blush all over.” He traced the scalloped edges of her panties high on her thighs. “Pink,” he murmured, “with blue ribbon. Your favorite pair.”
Her blush felt like it would eat up her whole body. “I didn’t realize you paid so much attention to my clothing.”