Brilliant white fire against her skin and she knew he was glowing, this lethal being she dared tease in the most intimate of ways. His response when it came, was starkly sensual. Your mouth—his voice sandpaper in her mind—is a little piece of heaven and hell.
Moaning low in her throat, she stroked up, swirled her tongue around the head before sliding her mouth back down the enticement that was his body. She loved the taste of him, the contrast of steel and silk, the way he murmured hot little promises of retribution.
Under her hands, his muscles grew granite-hard, his skin sheened with heat. “Enough, Elena.” A command.
She let him feel her teeth.
A crash of waves inside her mind, a wild storm. I am, he said, no trace of the civilized male in him now, tying you to the bed next time.
Knowing he was so close to the edge that another caress would tip him over, Raphael stroked his hand down the sensitive arch of Elena’s left wing, sliding out of the sweet, hot prison of her mouth while she was distracted by the shock of sensation. But though her eyes glittered with the fever of their combined hunger, she didn’t give in. Lifting a single taunting finger, she sucked it between the kiss-swollen beauty of her lips.
That was all the encouragement the voracious hunger inside him needed. Spreading through his veins, it took him over, a rippling black fire. He returned to the bed in a dark wave of heat, flipping Elena onto her front, pulling her legs up and spreading them wide.
It was the rawest, most primitive way to possess a woman, but his hunter pushed up on her elbows, gave him a challenging look, and said, “I’m waiting.”
He slid into her in a single hard thrust. Her scream echoed off the walls, but it was a scream that held equal parts demand and need. Gripping her hips tight, he pulled out almost fully, then slammed back in. There was no mercy in him any longer, but Elena didn’t ask it from him.
Learn to fly fast, Elena, he said as he pushed them both to a final, blinding peak. Then we will dance in the sky.
They did have that bath—much later, Raphael stroking the washcloth over her wings with lazy movements as she leaned on the rim. “That feels so intimate.”
“It is.” A kiss pressed to the ultra-sensitive edge where her right wing grew out of her back. “Allowing someone to care for your wings is considered an act that takes a relationship well beyond the sexual.”
Limbs heavy with desire sated, she thought about that. “Can I wash your wings?” It would be the most delicious of indulgences, the most exquisite of pleasures.
“You’ve had that right since our first bath.”
The unadorned truth of his words made her heart ache.
“But,” he continued, placing the washcloth on the rim as he fit himself to her back, “right now, you’re in no shape to do anything but relax.”
She heard the thread of male pride in that, felt the ache translate into sensual affection. “You give good sex, Archangel.”
A squeeze of her breasts, his free hand reaching between them to stroke two fingers into her. Sucking in a breath, she found her voice. “Again?” Heat uncurled in her abdomen.
“Again.” Withdrawing his fingers, he dropped a kiss to the curve of her neck, his erection nudging at her.
“Be gentle.”
She felt him smile at her echo of his earlier words. For you, Elena, anything. He slid into her in a smooth thrust, her body stretching to accommodate him in sharp ecstasy. And when he moved this time, it was slow and deep, a claiming so tender, he would’ve stolen her heart if she hadn’t already given it to him high above a ruined Manhattan.
Elena was fairly certain her muscles were jelly the next day, but she crawled to the training session with Galen regardless. Raphael had given her the massage he’d promised her before they fell asleep, and nothing was actually torn or broken, so it was going to be all about working through the muscle pain.
Galen took one look at her and threw her what felt like a ten-ton metal brick. She stared at the claymore—and it sure looked like the heavy Scottish weapon—for a second, then set her feet and lifted. Her biceps quivered, but the damn blade ended up vertical, the tip pointed to the cloudy blue sky.
Galen scanned her shoulders, her arms. “You’re stronger than a normal mortal.”
“I’m no longer mortal,” she pointed out, only just keeping the claymore upright.
“No one has records on an angel Made, but if the same principles apply as with vampires, then your strength won’t increase to immortal levels for a significant period.”
Shrugging, she left it at that. The fact that the hunter-born were slightly stronger than ordinary humans wasn’t exactly a secret, but neither was it advertised. And while she might now be an immortal, she was still hunter-born, still a member of the Guild. Those were loyalties she’d never betray.